Razing Beijing: A Thriller

by Elston III, Sidney

  Lester Burns unfolded the letter and began reading aloud. “President Denis, We find no alternative but to regard your sanction of an attempt to kidnap Chinese citizens as a direct attack on bilateral relations. How would the American public view such an act? Do we not strive, together in good faith, toward economic and cultural interdependence from which our peoples mutually benefit?

  “Mr. President, there is terrain for which one does not contend. We would like to suggest that such miscalculations are sometimes the result of well-intentioned yet improper counsel. Perhaps the incident to which we refer is one such example? We shall deem the incident moot on this basis and demand no apology.

  “It’s signed ‘In cordial respect, Ambassador Lao.’ ” Burns looked up from the letter and grinned.

  “Yeah, well, Lao’s a clever bastard.” The veiled prompt for division within the enemy camp—where there was failure, fan the flames of blame—was actually pathetic. “I trust the President sees through that. Especially given that Beijing actually unleashed fighter jets on Hong Kong to force down commercial airliners over this guy.”

  “I think he knows the score. That’s not to say he’s not disappointed. Herman, on the other hand, was apoplectic.”

  McBurney had now lost his two strongest leads for proving that China had launched stolen US technology into orbit. Complications surrounding the Iranian double agent’s murder inside the Rivergate apartment complex had created whole new categories of questions than existed when Ahmadi was alive. The botched defection was particularly bad in that the Agency had failed to extract even the most basic corroborating evidence from the physicist Zhao. As National Security Advisor, Herman must have called for his resignation.

  “The President still plans to deny it was ever anything but a humanitarian mission,” said Burns. “He’s going to have State take the initiative in asserting that charade. Do we know what they did with the physicist?”

  “Qincheng, probably.”

  “With his wife terminally ill?”

  “We’re guessing that by now the woman is dead.”

  Director Burns set the letter down on his desk. “You think your snakehead blew mission security?”

  “We’ve been going around on that. We did experience a last-minute lapse at the other end. It’s conceivable Public Security might have pinpointed their falsified documents. If so, tracking their movements into Hong Kong would’ve been relatively straightforward. I perceived a lack of surprise on the part of the security types who nabbed Zhao and his wife at the airport.”

  “What sort of lapse are you talking about?”

  McBurney reminded Director Burns of their plan to receive advance warning in Hong Kong from their deep Beijing agent in the event something like what actually happened might be going down. “But we didn’t know surveillance had been intensified until we nearly stumbled into it.”

  “You were to hear from ‘SIREN’?”

  “That’s right, SIREN appears to be one broken link in the chain.”

  Burns’s expression turned to one of dread. “Turned?”

  McBurney would normally find curious Burns’s interest in a specific agent, but then again the communist government employee SIREN represented something of a rare asset. “If SIREN was turned, why break off contact? Her case officer doesn’t seem to think so.”

  McBurney was confident Burns understood that China was a hard target in the best of times. Nowadays, the raw intelligence was inconsistent and riddled with white noise. “We’ll figure out what happened. I’ve got three analysts working it. I also plan to bring it up this afternoon with His Royal Highness, the Ambassador.” Their Beijing station chief was such a pain in the ass. He glanced at his watch with dread.

  “That reminds me, Sam. Appropriations are underway on the Hill. I don’t have to remind you that the oversight bunch will be asked to weigh in. Don’t leave me standing too long with my finger in the dike. Don’t let this phantom satellite of yours become our own vanishing act.”

  “THERE’S EVIDENCE stateside of Chinese collaboration with Iranian espionage,” McBurney informed his Beijing Station Chief.

  Jim Rotger’s bored expression indicated his opinion of McBurney’s position, which they had already touched on before his return trip to Washington. With the possible exception of its occurrence on American soil, the news wasn’t exactly earth shattering. “What would make China embrace the risk of conducting espionage with Iran?”

  As good a Sinologist as McBurney considered himself, he was no match for Rotger’s time-tested accuracy in reading the vagaries of Chinese government. So renowned was the man in his official role as deputy ambassador, an unusual accreditation for a CIA field officer, that he had retained his Beijing post for two consecutive administrations. Perhaps for these reasons, Rotger came across to some of his Agency colleagues as an arrogant and cantankerous intellectual. “We don’t know, of course, but I do have a theory,” McBurney said as he leaned back in his office chair. “First, I’d like to hear yours.”

  “I really haven’t had enough time to develop any.”

  “You don’t need as much time as the average Joe.” McBurney smiled. They were off to a good start, as usual.

  “Well, your premise suggests that Iran is presently engaged in a multi-pronged assault on the United States.” Rotger toyed with his wedding band while eyeing McBurney. “No one debates OPEC’s ongoing oil embargo that Iran, and I guess Venezuela, seem to be championing. And you believe that Tehran was behind this terrorist strike on the Holocaust Museum?”

  “Most likely.”

  “I seriously doubt Beijing would risk becoming ensnared with them in the probable fallout. And collaboration in espionage, you say? China’s spycraft can jump somersaults over Iran’s. They simply don’t need them. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. So.” Rotger smiled. “What’s your theory?”

  “Beijing’s already in bed with Iran through OPEC,” McBurney observed. “I know you’ve seen the overheads that show construction of all these new tanker depots.” Shanghai Oil Refinery had contracted with BP to expand Pudong’s oil terminal capacity. Similar work was being done at the ports of Quanzhou, site of their largest oil terminal expansion project, and further south, at Guangzhou. “The upshot is most of Iranian and Saudi product now flows into Chinese ports.”

  “That’s a hard accusation to prove without solid numbers.”

  McBurney shrugged. Last month the PLA navy sank another Vietnamese gunboat in the Spratlys over oil rights. PetroChina recently outbid three rivals and now controlled almost thirty percent of Indonesian oil assets. The oil company executives that the CIA talked to seemed to be stumped as to why China’s supply, on its present trajectory, would grow by a whopping 30% in the next eighteen months. Some analysts speculated that Beijing expected a major Middle East supply disruption. But the evidence suggested that China was awash in Middle East oil. “I really didn’t invite you here to have another discussion about oil. This Ahmadi character took our most promising leads to the grave. We have to figure out how to recover, and I think that means we have to find who his handler was. Attacking the problem from both ends means I’ll need your help over there.”

  “State Security does not traditionally bring non-ethnic Chinese into their circle,” Rotger reminded his boss.

  “All the more reason for them to feel they could proceed without our suspecting it.”

  Rotger studied his face, blinking his eyes.

  For the next twenty minutes, their discussion touched upon possible explanations involving Beijing’s response to America’s on-again, off-again missile defense shield, Iran’s possible stake in that outcome, cross-strait-relations between Beijing and Taipei, and the uncertainty cast upon all of it, on the eve of tectonic change brought about by ‘Succession’ within the Communist Party leadership.

  McBurney said, “There’s another piece of this puzzle, what the Chinese are concocting inside their secret weapons lab. Our would-be defecting physicist led us to believe it was s
ignificant.”

  “Weapons lab...?”

  McBurney tore open the sealed envelope delivered earlier by Langley Security. He removed the 8-1/2x11 inch photographs that he’d had his office dredge out of the archives and placed the series on the table beneath Rotger’s nose. The first was a grainy black-and-white photograph, covertly acquired from across the street of an old stone structure several stories tall, distinct from the adjacent modern buildings in several respects: PLA soldiers patrolled the sidewalk in front of it, and all of its windows were barred, as if it were a prison. In fact, the building was believed to have been a prison at various times throughout its existence. The picture, McBurney knew, was taken three years ago.

  “Do you recognize this place?”

  “Sure. That’s the Old Defense Building on Iron Lion Lane that you cabled me about. I’ve tried to get you a more recent photograph. Problem is it’s hard to stand within two blocks of the place. Whenever someone stops their car, or tries to appear as though they’re fumbling with a sandwich bag or a roadmap, a guard appears out of nowhere and orders them immediately out of the area. You can see how other buildings obstruct it. You’re suggesting that’s a secret weapons lab? In the middle of Beijing?”

  McBurney referred Rotger to the other five photographs. Produced by the National Reconnaissance Office, the images showed aerial views of a building magnified such that the rectangular roof filled most of the frame. Focus and overall quality were excellent. Each had also been cropped, labeled, and arranged chronologically, in precisely the same orientation, so as to contrast the rooftop’s accumulation of antennae, tracking radar, satellite dishes, eventually a profusion of telecommunications gear which had appeared over time.

  McBurney explained. “This first one was taken a year and a half ago. I had it pulled from the archive after an analyst drew our attention to the orientation of the satellite dishes in these recent views. These two large dishes here, and here, were both erected sometime within the past year.”

  Rotger picked up the photo and compared it to the more recent shots.

  “The main thing here is that virtually all of these other dishes are fixed at azimuths corresponding to known satellites in geostationary orbits.”

  “We know that for certain?”

  “Yes. I didn’t have all the photos pulled. A close examination over time reveals that the appearance of several of these older dishes corresponds with established communications, even all the way back to when the PRC didn’t give a damn about coordinating their satellite orbits with other countries. Our methodology can’t be too far off.”

  “These two more recent dishes move, but judging by their compass direction...don’t they point toward something in equatorial orbit?”

  McBurney slapped his hand on the desk. “By God, you’ll make it as an analyst after all!”

  Rotger apparently failed to find any humor in that.

  McBurney said, “They appeared on the rooftop a few weeks before the launch of what the Chinese claim was a military communications satellite. They were aimed at a new azimuth on the day that the Chinese reported they’d lost their satellite.”

  “So maybe these dishes were tracking the satellite, and they moved them to try and recover it after it was lost.”

  McBurney shook his head. “They continue to move, and with too much periodicity for some type of search. We know what they claim. I don’t think it was lost.”

  Rotger seemed intrigued in spite of himself. “As for this weapons lab, there’s no record of scientific or engineering personnel frequenting the premises.”

  “You said they won’t let you near it.”

  “Granted. But we need some other source. Just because they erect satellite dishes—”

  “We never got to debrief the defecting physicist. I’ll admit that no one in D.C. seems to give a shit about what I have to say about it, either.”

  Rotger lowered his gaze to the photographs.

  “What it calls for is more aggressive intelligence gathering,” McBurney asserted. “It’s critical that we uncover their espionage ring in the States. Unfortunately, the FBI is preoccupied with Islamic terrorism. I think to understand what’s going on inside that building, and inside Xichang where they launch, we need to know what technology they’re after. It may all be related.”

  Rotger did not appear eager.

  McBurney let out a deep breath. “What about using SIREN? Have we reestablished—”

  “SIREN was pronounced dead.”

  “Dead? What are you talking about?”

  Rotger frowned. “Someone should’ve sent you a cable. Yes, she died in her hospital bed. Some sort of brain tumor.”

  34

  PAUL DEVINN STOOD at the end of the dock and waved off the pilot of the amphibious Cessna. The plane taxied for several minutes toward the other side of the lake, and then steadily gained speed as it skimmed across the surface rippled by its own wake. The small charter leaped into the crisp afternoon sky and banked onto a reciprocal heading for Riverton, ninety-four miles away on the western bank of Lake Winnipeg. Devinn watched the plane disappear. The nearest outpost was a rugged twenty-three and three-tenths miles northeast. With luck, and if the weather continued its pattern of predictability, the pilot was the last person he would see for a number of weeks. Whatever distractions he might choose to occupy himself until then, his plans did not include much in the way of fishing.

  He hoisted his backpack and duffel bag to his shoulders for his first of several trips lugging supplies to the cabin. The dock had deteriorated in recent years, laced with rotting timbers, the whole thing creaking and swaying precariously as he walked toward the rocky out-crop of shore.

  He reached solid ground and set down his backpack and bag. The ancient log cabin was already fifty years old when his uncle had bought it in the 1980’s for fishing, although years had passed since either his uncle or mother last visited the place. Roots from a large spruce over the years had shifted the left front corner of the porch upward several feet, tearing the screen and rendering inhabitants vulnerable to gargantuan flies that invaded the lake in the fall.

  Devinn made a quick walk-around. No broken windows; the place looked undisturbed. He removed a set of keys from inside his blue jeans and unlocked the padlock on the thick, rough-hewn door. It swung open easily with a metallic squeal.

  Swatting back cobwebs with an old walking stick, he entered the kitchen. He wasted no time in opening the blinds to the sunlight; the cabin was without electricity. At least the water hand-pumped at the sink would be cool and clean. On his last trip he had made certain to stock plenty of stabilized gasoline, kerosene and various other nonperishable goods. The wood stove would quickly warm the damp, morning chill that crept in overnight from the perpetual cold of the lake.

  Three more trips completed the task of lugging supplies off the dock and into the cabin. The first thing he removed from his pack was a portable short-wave receiver. He tuned in the transcribed weather briefing for that region of Manitoba and began stocking the cupboards and pantry with vacuum packed goods and perishables. He had more than enough supplies to subsist comfortably for the duration of his leave from Thanatechnology. There would be no need to supplement his meals with fish from the lake.

  He rubbed away the grime from the window over the sink with the palm of his hand, and gazed out over the water. It’s true, he realized, that the more things change the more they stay the same—thirty years on, his early disdain for fishing had seeded his enlightened hatred for the rapacious gluttony of fishermen and all who take from the wild.

  His solitary visits here invariably touched off memories, good and bad, of times with family and friends. During visits in his youth, his father, and later his uncle, would drag him onto the lake fishing until Mother slept off her hangover. As he got older his parents allowed him to explore far reaches of the lake, thus freeing themselves to indulge their uninterrupted bouts of drinking and fighting. September always arrived with the dreaded ride home in
time for boarding school, where his developer father’s notorious wealth, his greasing of political palms and mechanized rape of the earth was a favorite topic of bullying and derision. Young Devinn later filled the vacuum of his absent father with the company of his friend Franklin Sweeney. Several years his senior and then a Wisconsin doctoral candidate, Frank would frequently join him here for lively debate and to smoke a little weed. Together they laid the intellectual foundation for the career that he was now playing out.

  He decided the time had come to step outside and head for the small fishing dock, located on the other shore of the property. He flinched at the sound of the door slamming shut behind him. Walking this path as a kid, he had the habit of counting the one-hundred and eighty-seven paces to the lake. Grasping for focus, he thought back to his brief flirtation with alerting either his mother or Frank of his impending disappearance. He’d made the right decision, of course. His Uncle Ted had informed him that his mother was suffering an acute alcohol-related psychosis. Frank, meanwhile, was imprisoned, his mentor and confidante largely cut off from current events, and with whom Devinn saw no reason to rush into contact.

  Rounding the stand of pine trees, the fishing dock on the edge of the lake came into view. The water appeared eerily calm, its mirror-like surface reflecting the sun—Devinn felt his feet become heavy and slow. Lashed upside down on the dock, its old aluminum hull battered by rocks, the Grumman rowboat was just as he’d left it. The breath he let out was ragged and long. It occurred to him now that maybe he had chosen the wrong plan to stage his disappearance. Inching forward, his legs unsteady, he was surprised and disgusted by the bile rising in his throat.

  35

  Monday, May 25

  Richmond, Virginia

  AT 6:53 IN THE MORNING, Robert Stuart eased his pick-up truck into an unmarked parking space near the main entrance to Coherent Light Incorporated. He allowed himself a moment of gratification. Expansion of CLI’s medical and digital communications groups during Stuart’s forty-one month hiatus had required two new buildings in order to house the additional engineers, systems analysts, and software consultants.