Darkness Under Heaven

by F. J. Chase

  “And what can two people do to a city of sixteen million?”

  “If I told you the damage one person can do to a modern city, you’d never believe me.”

  She seemed to be trying to properly phrase something. “And this would involve killing…”

  “No. You’ll be happy to hear that I don’t intend to kill anyone. On 9/11 Al Qaeda killed thousands of Americans, and what did that accomplish? Put every American, regardless of political persuasion, right behind their government. So for strictly practical, if not moral reasons, we don’t want to do that. Besides, it wouldn’t bother the Chinese leadership if I killed ten thousand of their people. But what they really fear is chaos. So that’s what I’m going to give them.”

  “You keep using that word.”

  “What happened when New Orleans went under water? Chaos. And who did Americans blame? Their government.”

  “I admit it’s a relief you’re not going to be killing people. I was picturing us as the Washington D.C. snipers.”

  “Well, kind of keep that overall idea in your head. Those two lunatics pretty much shut down the entire East Coast.”

  “You’re not going to kill people. But you’re going to replicate a hurricane?”

  “In a way. You know anything about systems disruption?”

  “Sorry. I was carrying a full course load that semester, and it was only an elective.”

  Avakian grinned at that. Welcome back, Doctor Rose. A few hours away from molestation, three killings, and a near-meltdown—and now she was actually getting all jazzed up by the prospect of mortal danger. He’d never understand women. “We’re on a really tight timeline, and I need to get a few things in motion.” He was up off the couch and dumping the first shopping bag out on the kitchen table. He handed her a box. “Here’s your hair color.”

  She looked first at him and then at the box, brow furrowed. Agreeing in principle was one thing. Staring at the reality quite another.

  Avakian knew that changing hair color when it wasn’t your idea was a major, major minefield. One that, if he was going to have to walk through, had better be done both quickly and lightly. “There are actually directions in English inside. Well, sort of English.”

  Her expression had now changed to one of pure skepticism. She opened the box.

  “I made a judgment call on the shade,” he said. “After weighing a number of different factors.”

  “You just walked down the aisle and grabbed one, didn’t you?”

  “I’ll have you know that there was a great deal of careful consideration, one might even say personal anxiety, involved in making that choice.”

  “You picked the box with the best-looking model, didn’t you?”

  Avakian shook his head sadly. “I would have thought that a doctor, of all people, would be above sexist slander.”

  One more look, and a raised eyebrow from her.

  “Okay,” Avakian conceded. “The box was a factor.”

  Now she gave him a crooked grin. “How did you get all this stuff around?”

  “Stole a car. Actually, a van.”

  “Have you broken your cell phone yet?”

  “After I made my call I happened to pull up next to a bus at a stoplight. That gave me an idea. The phone’s turned on and taped to the side of a westbound bus right now. So even if the Chinese don’t pick up the signal and track it down, I still amused myself.”

  “It’s better than being disgusted. Am I allowed to know who you called?”

  “Sure. My former boss Russell Marquand at the U.S. Embassy. The Chinese have all our diplomats locked in there. He gave me the news.”

  “Anything besides what you told me?”

  “The Chinese are moving troops into North Korea. They haven’t attacked the South yet, but they probably will if we get involved and any real shooting starts.”

  Judy Rose put her hand over her mouth. “Your son.”

  Avakian’s face was impassive. “He’ll have to take his chances like any other soldier.”

  “Why would the Chinese invade South Korea?”

  “It’s our only base, and our only troops, on the Asian landmass. Bounce us out of there and we’re never coming back. Not with a ten division army. And I don’t think the Chinese would be sad about eliminating South Korea as a peer competitor.”

  Doctor Rose clenched her fists in frustration. “And millions of people’s lives will be completely shattered.”

  “You could say that, by definition, the people who start wars don’t much care about such things,” Avakian replied.

  She broke off a piece of chocolate and popped it into her mouth. “Now that we’re trapped together in this apartment, can I ask you what is it with men?”

  “We really don’t have that kind of time,” Avakian said, theatrically looking at his watch. “Unless you’d like to narrow down the scope of that question.”

  “What is it with men and war?”

  Quite aware that he was walking the tightrope over Niagara Falls, Avakian kept a smile on his face. “Well, do you want to talk about ingrained aggression that comes from being both a predator and a prey species, that still governs our brains and hormones? The survival imperative to acquire, expand and defend hunting grounds and agricultural lands? Or that there could never be war and killing if women ran the show like, say, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Elizabeth I, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher and Benazir Bhutto?”

  “I’m going to withdraw into bitter silence now.”

  Avakian most definitely did not try to get the last word in by saying that was something women so rarely do. Instead he shut up and breathed a sigh of relief over having made a narrow escape. And busied himself in the bags.

  “What’s on the agenda now?” she asked, the bitter silence officially over.

  “I’m going to finish unpacking and get organized. You could start on your hair, if you like.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Nothing, really.”

  She broke off another piece of chocolate and popped it into her mouth. Chewing hard, hands on hips, not budging an inch.

  “Okay,” said Avakian. “I’m going to make some explosives.”

  “And I’m supposed to color my hair while you’re doing that?”

  “Well, that was sort of my motive in not mentioning it. But of course another set of hands would be very welcome.”

  They cleared off the kitchen table and unpacked all the ingredients. Doctor Rose was checking out all the bottles of hair lightener. “I don’t know what you have in mind here. But I have no intention of being that blonde.”

  “Have no fear,” said Avakian. “It’s not for you. We need hydrogen peroxide in a concentration of six percent or stronger, and the first aid products are only three percent. Check out the main ingredient in that hair bleach. I got the strongest they had, and the nice thing about beauty supply shops is that every day they deal with people who want to dye their hair green. No one gets suspicious about anything.”

  She read the back of the bottle. “H2O2. I didn’t major in chemistry, but that sounds like hydrogen peroxide. And strong enough to turn me into Edgar Winter.”

  “Just what the doctor ordered,” said Avakian.

  “Very funny.”

  “If you would, please open this box of hexamine tablets and pull each one out of the foil wrapping. Just put them on that kitchen towel.”

  “And these are?”

  “Solid fuel tablets. For camping. Light one and heat up your morning coffee.”

  Avakian measured hydrogen peroxide into a glass bowl. When she was finished he wrapped the towel around the fuel tablets and smashed them into powder. Using a teaspoon measure he dissolved crushed hexamine into the peroxide.

  “What now?” she said.

  Avakian was setting the kitchen timer. “We wait thirty minutes.”

  When the timer went off he dissolved powdered citric acid, what the Chinese called “sour salt,” into the solution. After mixing, he slid
the bowl into the refrigerator.

  “We let this stand until solid particles form in the bottom,” he said. “About eight hours for precipitation to take place. Pour the liquid through a coffee filter to collect the solids. Let the filter dry and remove the particles. Carefully. They’re very sensitive explosive. We’ll use it to make a blasting cap to set off less-sensitive explosive.”

  “That was actually pretty easy.”

  “Yeah, well, handling that dry powder isn’t going to be. It goes boom at the drop of a hat. Now we make the stuff it’s going to set off.”

  “I assume that’s what all the granulated swimming pool cleaner is for.”

  “You assume right.” Avakian measured the pool cleaner into big glass storage jars. China wasn’t big on environmental protection, and you could buy benzene at any paint store. He poured the liquid into the pool cleaner and stirred. “That’s it.”

  “Even easier.”

  “This is not the hard part about being an urban guerrilla. It’s a low-velocity explosive, but we’re not going to be blowing up any bridges. Now we come to the initiators.”

  With the jars of explosive lined up on the kitchen counter like baking ingredients, Avakian methodically cleared the table of all the leftovers. He threw the packaging into the rapidly filling trash bag and sprayed the table with cleanser. “Just in case there’s any explosive residue,” he told her as he wiped it down.

  “You’re very careful,” she said.

  “You can always tell a careful demo man by whether he still has all ten fingers.” He presented the full complement for her inspection. “So far so good. You have to stay focused, but it’s not like surgery.”

  “Patients don’t blow up during surgery. I was nervous enough watching. If you gave me the job, I’d be so scared I’d have to be sitting on a bedpan while I did it.”

  Avakian grinned and said, “It’s always a good rule of thumb not to make the bomb-maker laugh.”

  “Sorry.”

  Still chuckling, he unboxed the soldering iron and plugged it in. While it heated up he dismantled the bag full of flashlights he’d purchased, keeping the bulb housings and discarding the rest. Prying off the battery contact plates, he lined them all up on the table. Soon followed by another corresponding row of battery-powered digital kitchen clocks, with the back plates removed and the circuit boards exposed. A number of different models bought in different places—you didn’t walk into one kitchen store and ask for thirty timers.

  Next Judy held the two reels of blue-and-white insulated electric wire while he cut six-inch lengths and stripped the ends, making two piles.

  The iron was hot. Avakian went down the row and soldered positive and negative wires onto the battery housings and the buzzer contacts of the timers.

  While the solder cooled he used a file to cut two grooves for the wires in the plastic back plates of the clocks and screwed them on again. “Let’s see if it works,” he said. He twisted the blue wires together for a bulb and a timer. Then the white. Setting the timer for ten seconds he pushed the button to start it. “Keep your fingers crossed.”

  The seconds ticked down to zero, and when the buzzer went off the bulb lit up. “Eureka,” Avakian exclaimed. He went down the line and checked every one. Two didn’t work, and rather than fool around he threw them away.

  After that he unhooked the wires and moved the bulbs down to the other end of the table.

  China was the land of fireworks. And unlike America they still made and sold the original cherry bomb. Avakian cut a couple of the round firecrackers open to harvest the propellant. Which was not black powder, but flash powder.

  With the file, he carefully cut a hole in the top of each bulb. And filled the insides with flash powder, sealing it back up with epoxy.

  “So that’s what sets it off,” she said.

  “It’s kind of a three-stage process,” Avakian replied. “I’ve got some three-quarter-inch diameter brass tubing, and we’ll cut that into three, three-and-a-half-inch lengths and seal one end with the epoxy. I’ll fill that with the sensitive explosive and fit the bulb on the open end. The bulb sets off the sensitive explosive, which produces enough detonation velocity to fire the main charge. But first comes the grunt work. We have to cut that steel pipe into about foot and a half lengths and thread both ends for a cap.”

  “With our teeth?” she asked.

  “Well, if you want. But I’ll be using the pipe cutter and the threader I bought.”

  “Won’t a saw wake up the neighbors?”

  Avakian showed her the pipe cutter. “It’s like a clamp with a blade. You just tighten it onto the pipe, turn, and it cuts a groove. Screw it down a little tighter and keep going until the pipe comes apart. You’d have to drop it on the floor to make any noise. After that I spoon the explosive into the pipes, fit in the detonator, run the wires out, screw on the end cap, and tape the timer to the outside. Your basic pipe bomb. With a little more kick.”

  “And you’re sure it will work.”

  “There are only three sure things in this world,” Avakian told her. “Death, taxes, and the fact that any white guy who wears dreadlocks does not use deodorant.”

  11

  “From the pattern of the cell phone signals it is certain that he was inside a vehicle,” said Inspector Cheng.

  Commissioner Zhou was peering at the clear acetate overlay that covered the large wall map where the clerk had marked the location of the signals received by the cellular base stations. He traced a line with his finger and tapped the acetate with his fingernail. “State Security discovered his cell phone on a bus in Yanch. What does this mean to you?”

  “That he did not flee west,” Inspector Cheng replied.

  “It means nothing. He may have fled in any direction. He may not have fled at all. I think not at all, so we will allow State Security to spend their resources searching for him outside the city. Avakian enjoys his cleverness, but there will always be a plan. We must discover the plan behind his cleverness. Join me at the map.”

  Inspector Cheng moved up beside him. “I could assemble all this information on the computer for you.”

  Commissioner Zhou turned his head briefly to look up and over at him. “And then I would be straining to see detail on a small computer screen, and doubtless miss something important.”

  “I am sorry, Commissioner.”

  “One should always endeavor to not say anything which will require an apology. Now, observe the map. From the location where he killed the soldiers, we see his path move roughly eastward through the automatic banking machine transactions he made. He is clever and does not move in a straight line, constantly changing direction. Then near the city center he stops withdrawing money. No taxi or bus picked them up, and there is no video from the subway. They were both on foot. And could have proceeded in any direction. But I think not to retrace his steps. So north, south or continuing east. Which narrows the area we must search.”

  The phone rang, and the inspector answered. He hung up and announced excitedly, “A white man of Avakian’s description purchased five flashlights from a shop in the Dongzhimen district last night.”

  “Dongzhimen?” Commissioner Zhou tapped the map once again. “How did we gain this information?”

  “From the local officer on patrol. Why would he purchase so many flashlights?”

  “That is not the relevant point, however interesting. Send an immediate alert to all local bureaus in the city. Particularly the small foot stations. They must make inquiries at every shop in their localities with Avakian’s photograph. We must know immediately of any shop that has seen him.”

  A Chinese officer would never willingly lose face by saying he did not understand. So Inspector Cheng instead asked, “And what he has purchased?”

  “Yes, but that is still less relevant than us being aware of every location he has been seen. These we will mark on the map.”

  “To seek a pattern?”

  “No. The absence of a pattern.
When we plot every location where he has left an identifiable trace, we will see that he has been all over the city. Except for one area. That area is where he is hiding. And when we discover which of his friends and contacts lives within that area, then we will have found him.”

  Commissioner Zhou picked up a marker and began shading in sections of the city. “We must make significant progress this day. I suspect he will be stationary in daylight, and active at night. If everyone completes their work assignments satisfactorily, we will find him tomorrow.”

  12

  “Any second thoughts?” said Avakian. “I can still take you back to the apartment, no problem.”

  “No thank you,” said Doctor Rose.

  “Just so you understand this means you have to go where I go. You don’t want to be sitting here alone in the van if someone stops by and wants to know what you’re doing. And where I’m going tonight won’t be all that pleasant.”

  That combination of what she considered to be condescension veiled as consideration was really starting to annoy her. “No matter how many times you tell me, I still understand. Even the way I’m feeling now, it’s better than staying behind in that apartment.”

  “Everyone feels that way the first time they do something like this. I feel tight right now myself.”

  She didn’t buy it. He looked like he’d just scored free tickets to the hottest show in town. Having the time of his life. While as soon as she heard what she’d agreed to do she had to go to the bathroom. Every time she went she felt like she had to go again a minute later. “I doubt that anyone ever felt like this.”

  “Your stomach’s squeezed down to about the size of a raisin, right? If your hands aren’t shaking your knees are. And if you haven’t sweated through your shirt yet, you will.”

  She looked over at him as they weaved through the evening traffic. “You described all my symptoms perfectly. At first I thought I was starting menopause. Which was just what I needed right now.”

  Avakian chuckled. Menopause.

  “You felt this way?” she said.