Razing Beijing: A Thriller

by Elston III, Sidney

  THE NEXT MORNING, MOUSAVI entered the Franklin Avenue subway entrance as he frequently did, eyes systematically scanning the crowd of commuters for the unbidden stare or unremarkable gesture.

  A graduate of Tehran’s highly regarded Dar-ul-Fonun Polytechnic Institute, the spy possessed the customary engineer’s eye for detail—a trait appreciated by the Ministry of Intelligence & Security officer who had recruited him inside the trendy Montmartre cafe. As a student living in Paris, Mousavi had already grown to resent the invasiveness of American culture. The clincher had been his fellow Iranian’s lure of a posh flat overlooking the Parc de Montsouris; the cost of completing his masters degree at l’Ecole Polytechnique would also be covered. As he gradually proved his competence, his responsibilities increased. He helped conduct surveillance of a safe house outside Paris being used by Mossad. A forged Canadian passport made simple his first significant task, that of boarding a Norwegian cruise ship in the Caribbean port of Charlotte Amalie. Five kilos of Semtex remotely detonated inside his luggage had suitably terrified not only the vacationing party of retired Knesset, but also for a time any Jew traveling anywhere in the world. His assault on American arrogance soon included symbolic attacks on their Holocaust Museum and, most recently, the Trans-Alaskan pipeline. As an Aryan Shi’a, Mohammad Mousavi was neither theologically averse to the notion of martyrdom nor partial to the idea of personally embracing it. For Mousavi, the gratification in completing such tasks vastly exceeded even the frequently harrowing risk of his capture.

  Mousavi stepped off the subway at Flatbush Avenue. The parking garage was a few blocks away; the commute to his engineering position at the private security firm in northern New Jersey required a car, a roomy but not too extravagant Buick Lucerne. Upon exiting the subway to the street he then approached the news stand; the sidewalks and streets were too busy to effectively check for a tail. Standing behind the counter of the kiosk was his Turkish friend. The two men made eye contact.

  “Times this morning, sir?”

  “If you please,” Mousavi replied.

  The Turk turned and removed a newspaper from among the dozens of various publications lining his shelves. In Mousavi’s palm as he accepted the paper was a folded hundred dollar bill. Eight seconds after stepping up to the kiosk, the transaction was complete.

  SPECIAL AGENT HILDEBRANDT looked up from the photos and directed a questioning glance toward each of the two junior investigators assigned to his case. “Do you think she could have just as easily bought the magazine when she was inside the pharmacy?” He glanced again at the picture of the lawyer standing at the newspaper stand. The angle was bad. A judge could argue that she had merely set down her purse and umbrella on the counter in order to free her hands to pay for the magazine. Even that was evident only by peering through an unfocused maze of pedestrians. This being his first opportunity to conduct surveillance with the metropolitan New York office, Hildebrandt shook his head. But Jesus these poor bastards have a tough job, Hildebrandt thought. No wonder so many criminals disappear in this place.

  “The pharmacy did have the same issue in stock.” Agent Nicholas Brophy rubbed his eyes. “We checked.”

  Luckily, that much of the surveillance photographs was clear, the size of Life magazine having helped. “It’s a thin rationale.”

  “It’s something. The check-out counter inside the pharmacy would have been less chaotic.”

  Hildebrandt set the photographs down. “What else?”

  Brophy sighed. “Starbucks with her boyfriend, the pharmacy, the magazine, the cleaners, her office, lunch. A thousand brush-pass opportunities in between. She got to her office at about the usual time this morning, a little before eight. I wouldn’t try to read too much into the different routine. It’s not really unusual if you walk to work, especially if this guy she’s bedding is the putz he appears to be and sticks her with doing all the errands.”

  Hildebrandt’s dilemma was typical. The best way to bypass the attorney-client privilege block thrown up by the law firm was if he first produced sufficiently compelling evidence of criminal activity. But the best way to acquire the evidence was to bypass the attorney-client privilege. There was no guarantee; he’d been warned that circuit courts in these parts were particularly queasy about approving privacy invasions of their local attorneys. The FBI agent’s first request for wiretapping the lawyer had been based on circumstantial evidence, obtained incidental to the Cleveland tail he had put on the CLI executive and his Chinese girlfriend. There was the credit card used at the Port of Duluth by a supposed American citizen, for whom—Hildebrandt had slightly illegally confirmed—the IRS had no record of having ever filed a tax return. The combination of these things had driven the U.S. district attorney ballistic, responding to Special Agent Hildebrandt in no uncertain terms, Not over my dead fucking body! and even then, Not this fucking office! and finally suggesting that the FBI were the ones at risk of being indicted.

  “You counted how many newsstand customers?” Hildebrandt asked.

  Brophy read from the surveillance log sheets. “In the next five minutes there were twenty-three. Seven were Asian, another five could have been Middle Easterners. Ten might have been Paul Devinn in disguise, not counting the women. By the way, the newsie’s merchant license and so forth all check out. He’s a naturalized Turkish-American, been here twelve years, had a civil infrac’ with a landlord and another involving a blow-up at his daughter’s high school.” Brophy looked up from the sheets. “We’re still checking out other guests who accompanied Bloch and her boyfriend to the Manhattan party last weekend. That’s going to take some time.

  “Truth is it might take a day or a month before we clear the letter-perfect hurdle for that wiretap. Maybe we ought to just take a swipe at the district attorney with what we got here.”

  Hildebrandt studied the photograph of Christina Bloch stuffing the magazine into her bag. “You think he might go for it?”

  “Well, yeah. If not for the fact we were bugging a lawyer, I’ve seen him spring for a Title III with a lot less than what we have here.”

  72

  SOL BERNSTEIN WAVED HIS VISITOR in from behind his desk without getting up. “Sorry for the wait,” the owner of the Baltimore Ravens apologized before returning the phone to his ear.

  The office was as plush and extravagant as any Stuart had ever seen. Two wide-screen televisions, a full-length bar, and dozens upon dozens of trophies adorned the room. Several over-stuffed leather sofas and chairs were positioned along a glass wall with a view of the entire stadium—Stuart saw in the distance a large upended dump-truck in the middle of the field, surrounded by dirt and construction workers with shovels. There on Bernstein’s desk, beside a pile of papers, was the business card that Stuart had handed the press agent an hour ago. Bernstein, appearing extraordinarily fit and tan, gestured for him to sit down.

  Bernstein hung up the phone. “I’ve had more nuts rolling in out’a the woodwork for the past couple days. This last bunch I turned away were from some crazy crop circle cult or something.” Bernstein shook his head. He calmly sized up Stuart from beneath a bushy set of eyebrows. “You don’t look like a nut.”

  Stuart smiled. “You’re very kind.”

  Bernstein laughed. “You think you might be able to solve this riddle?”

  Stuart had given a good deal of thought as to how he would answer that question. On the one hand, the mysterious Internet riddles he had received revealed by themselves nothing about the classified work they were doing at CLI. On the other hand, if a connection could be made between it and the strange activity here at the stadium, Bernstein and others might understandably make it their business to pry into what CLI was up to, the certain result being to unleash the wrath of the government upon the company. CLI had no obligation to reveal anything, of course. They could always quash publicity with an appropriately worded disavowal, when and if the time arose.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Stuart began. “The truth is that I had to
make a trip, and decided to stop in because it happened to be convenient.” He leaned forward. “But a day or so before this unfortunate event of yours, I did receive a very unusual message. The nature of the message strongly suggested that whoever had sent it knew in advance what was gong to happen to your stadium.” Stuart described the image in the e-mail message, leaving out specific wording of the riddle, deeming it actually more insinuating than Bernstein needed to know.

  “That sounds like something the authorities here might be interested in seeing.”

  “They might, but I need to be up front with you. Some of our work is government classified. I think the best approach is for me to first sniff around to see if it’s worth anyone’s while.”

  Bernstein was unmoved. “So what can I do for you, Mr. Stuart?”

  “Mind if I go down and have a look?”

  “Why not,” Bernstein shrugged. “I want to see myself how they’re coming along.”

  By the time Stuart approached with Bernstein by his side, much of the excavation was nearly filled in with several fresh loads of concrete. Fortunately, one section of the earthen scar appeared to be relatively undisturbed. The first thing that struck Stuart was how uniform the depth and overall proportions appeared. It was as if somebody had painstakingly carved out a ton of earth with the precision of a surgical knife, except it certainly wasn’t a knife that had done this...Stuart felt a knot form in his stomach.

  The excavation was four to five inches deep, and where it hadn’t already been backfilled, the sides and bottom appeared peculiarly smooth. Even the corners were cut with sharp definition. At various locations around the edge, pieces of crushed stone had been dislodged by people venturing close with their feet; Bernstein indicated that various investigators from around the country had already been there gathering evidence. Stuart knelt beside an undisturbed section several feet long. It was difficult to envision any sort of shovel or heavy equipment being capable of something like this. Bernstein watched over his shoulder as he removed the pen from his pocket and placed it against the side of the shallow pit. Whatever method had been employed for removing the earth, it had not been trained on the ground from an angle, as might have been done, say, from the upper row of the bleachers. To Stuart’s eye, the pen was standing perfectly vertical.

  “What do you see?” Bernstein asked.

  Stuart stood up. “I’m not sure.”

  At that, Bernstein saw something more interesting and walked over to the construction crew. A moment later Stuart heard him loudly complain, “That goddamn truck is fucking up my playing surface!”

  Stuart used his pen this time to work loose a rock the size of a shot glass from the bottom of the excavation. He studied it for a moment, and then dropped it into his coat pocket. A few feet away—he stood about even with the center of the stadium field—Stuart found something else.

  “Mind if I take this?” Stuart asked Bernstein a few minutes later.

  “What the hell is it?”

  “I think it’s a piece of your turf.”

  “What are you going to—ah shit, take it. Hey!” Bernstein shouted at the top of his lungs to the driver of the truck. “I said there’s drainage pipes under there you imbecile!”

  73

  EMILY HAD THOUGHT SHE STRUCK a positive rapport with her new associates, including even Francois Rousseau. She understood that the technical opinions of a newcomer would be met with the normal degree of skepticism. Today, Rousseau eyed Emily’s notations with the first signs of grudging respect. This was important; Rousseau directed the French contingent, responsible for fully a third of the code being generated at CLI.

  The prematurely balding man quietly studied the lines of code transcribed to the smart board from the printout piled in heaps on the floor. There was no pressure that Rousseau appear to do this particularly quickly; at her suggestion, the two of them were alone. Emily had dropped all the necessary hints to make clear her indifference to whomever claimed credit for the improvements. Why does this have to be so infuriating?

  Rousseau pursed his lips and generated little clicking noises between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He shook his head, stretched his legs beneath the conference table and gazed at the board on the wall. Frowning deeply, he began a slow thoughtful nod. “There is another, profoundly interesting aspect to this, however, which I—”

  Thackeray burst open the door to the conference room, interrupting Rousseau. For a moment he stood wordlessly eyeing them, winded, his chest rising and falling. He said to Emily, “Stu’s back. They want us in Perry’s office.”

  Emily took her own work seriously. “Did Mr. Stuart say what it was about?”

  “Nope.”

  “Francois and I will be through in just a few minutes.”

  Thackeray looked at Rousseau, and then back at her. “You’d better come now.”

  Perry greeted them in his conference room with something of a scowl. “Please close the door.”

  Joanne Lewis was seated beside Steven Reedy. Emily’s eyes met Stuart’s as she and Thack took up seats amidst the air of an argument interrupted. Figuring she would know soon enough, Emily didn’t bother asking what the rock and turf mat were doing in the middle of the table.

  Ralph Perry eyed the rock as if it were pestilence. “What are you hoping to prove?”

  Stuart was silent for some time. “I’m guessing that when a teleportation process sections through an object, the remaining surface will display a unique signature. Thack, what would you say?”

  “Well, I’d expect to see granular boundaries somewhat pristine, not traumatized compared to, say, cutting with a razor blade, or even a typical laser beam, which generates heat.”

  “I’ll speculate that if we zap away half of these same specimens,” Stuart said, “and then compare the new sections to the Baltimore specimens under high-magnification, we might find them to be similar. It’s a long shot, Ralph, I know that. But what the hell? I don’t see what we’ve got to lose.”

  Perry asked, “You’ve suspected something about this e-mail message for some time?”

  “I tried to call you. They said you were out playing golf.”

  “I was out with a customer, and I carry this thing called a cell phone. Sol Bernstein agreed to meet you on the presumption of a hunch. That’s what you told him?”

  “Ralph, I do not understand your focus here. Think about this. The volume of material removed from that field was impressive—according to Bernstein, in the blink of an eye. He had someone map out the dimensions using a laser transit and compare them to that company logo. Guess what? The proportions are identical within tenths of an inch—we’re talking about a gigantic hole in the ground.”

  Emily could see as well as Stuart that nobody was moved. She reached to examine the piece of rock on the table. “May I?”

  “Sure,” Stuart said. “It’s not just the similarity of the pattern to the e-mail image. You should’ve seen what the gravel at the bottom of the hole looked like. Whatever method was used to remove the material left the exposed surfaces of residual pieces smoothly cut and even to one another. I mean, when I first walked up to the edge of this thing, I thought the base of the hole looked like a huge slab of polished marble. Then I realized that the dark veins were gaps between individual pieces of rock.” He shook his head.

  Thackeray asked, “How much material did you say was missing?”

  Stuart slid his notepad across the table.

  Thackeray glanced at Stuart’s calculations. “No way,” Thackeray chortled. “Get real, Stu. No way.”

  “You told me yourself that scaling this process is limited only by available power.”

  Thackeray shook his head, dismissing the possibility.

  It was clear to Emily that Stuart was battling a state of denial. The tension in the room seemed only to increase whenever he spoke.

  Stuart said to Perry, “I understand you found evidence that somebody was pilfering software. Maybe we’ve stumbled upon what they—”


  “We think we might have found evidence,” Perry corrected him.

  Reedy added, “The FBI agrees that what we found never really amounted to evidence.”

  Stuart said to Perry, “Yet you saw fit to call this meeting.”

  Perry turned toward Lewis. “What’s our liability regarding theft of intellectual property?”

  “CLI is contractually obligated to have reasonable safeguards in place to prevent it, of course,” Lewis replied. “What’s our liability? I think all we did was strip a boilerplate defense contractor clause. I’d have to go back and check.”

  Emily studied the rock in her hand. One side was flat and very smooth as if polished. The force to exhume such a large amount of material from the earth had been tremendous—yet precise enough to smoothly sever pebbles without moving them.

  Stuart was looking at her with a quizzical smile. “You get it, don’t you?”

  “I’m getting it, too,” Perry said. “It’s utter bullshit. You’re seriously building the case that somebody constructed a device like ours and used it to transport that material away?”

  “How would you explain it?”

  “I wouldn’t attempt to. First of all, you’d have to believe somebody out there is years ahead of our effort. That’s preposterous for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that same somebody has deep enough pockets and is able to dedicate the resources while keeping it all secret.”

  Thackeray looked crestfallen. “It would have to be one of our partners.”

  Perry looked ready to rip Thackeray’s head off. “We just agreed we haven’t got a case of stolen intellectual property. Let’s not start blaming the partners.”