Razing Beijing: A Thriller

by Elston III, Sidney

  Stuart realized how easy to have asked Deng exactly where her father was. “I wouldn’t race to any conclusions. I mean, we are speculating here.”

  He heard Emily sigh. “I’m very, very happy about my mother. Maybe there’s still hope for her. Thank you so much for telling me.” Her voice was beginning to break up. She handed over the phone to Thackeray.

  LULLED BY THE SERENITY at thirty-seven thousand feet, Carolyn Ross snuggled beneath a blanket on the plane’s single leather sofa. Meanwhile, the content of the Immediate Cable in McBurney’s hands had rendered him unable to sleep. Were recent Chinese military deployments, although minor in nature, actually a prelude to greater mobilization—the forceful reunification of Taiwan? He had dismissed estimates by some analysts that their massive oil hoarding might be in preparation for war. Had he been wrong, after all? What else might explain China’s strategy in monitoring the passage of Seventh Fleet warships through the South China Sea?

  McBurney interrupted his musing to find Stuart crouching beside him.

  “There’s something you probably ought to know,” Stuart said quietly, glancing at Ross’s sleeping form.

  McBurney pulled his stocking feet from the opposite seat.

  Stuart sat down and leaned forward. “My staff believe they measured transmissions twice now from an orbiting satellite, both times at the instant of these recent terrorist attacks. Now, they don’t have access to the sort of equipment that would track and verify it. Thing is, they say they’ve identified the transmissions as being Chinese in origin.”

  McBurney stared at him. “I told you that I could get thrown into jail for even talking about this. Any way, to the best of my knowledge, NORAD still hasn’t found a trace of this friggin’ satellite. Believe me when I say that I wish it were otherwise. Unless they do, the government’s position will be that it broke up soon after its insertion into orbit like we’ve already discussed. They have not registered any spurious, unidentifiable transmission of the type you describe. I don’t know what else I can do. On the other hand, I’m told there is evidence—hard evidence—discovered by the FBI to confirm the George Washington Bridge was destroyed using conventional explosives. How do you explain that?”

  Presented with two different versions of reality, Stuart leaned back and stared through the window into the dark void that enveloped the plane.

  McBurney said, “You mentioned multiple terrorist attacks.”

  “Yeah, the latest being this New Jersey refinery. I assumed you knew about it.”

  “They already caught the guys.”

  “Maybe. I’m told the press quotes the plant manager as saying that a primary gang-valve assembly seems to have vanished into thin air. Doesn’t that sound a little suspicious?”

  McBurney’s eyebrows knotted. He moved to look at his watch.

  “I already checked. The refinery exploded nine twenty-five Thursday morning. That’s forty-nine hours and very small change after the GWB attack. Nice round number, wouldn’t you say?”

  McBurney shrugged.

  “Incidentally, Congress formally yanked the funding from my program.” Stuart described a lock-down that sounded more to McBurney like a medical quarantine.

  “Over a security problem?” McBurney asked.

  “I think it was more about the budget and schedule overruns. Frankly, we’ve had our share of stumbles, as happens with most any R&D project. I almost hate to bring this up, but remember Deng’s warning that my development program would be ‘obstructed,’ or something like that?”

  “I remember you saying something like that. I’m really not in the mood for any more of your shit.”

  “Ah, but there’s more.” Stuart described what he apparently thought to be the pinnacle of intrigue, this involving CLI’s legal counsel.

  McBurney found what Stuart was suggesting bordered on the conspiratorial absurd. He also had to struggle to keep from confusing elements of the Thanatechnology and CLI quagmires.

  Stuart was staring at him. “You know something I don’t?”

  “Absolutely not. She was working to reverse the ruling by Congress?”

  “And abducted the night before the hearing.”

  “So it sounds a little suspicious.” McBurney pictured in his mind the image of another, yet to be explained Chinese connection, that of Emily Chang’s physicist father with a gun-barrel to his head...he wondered if Stuart had made the same observation. “Walking the cat back to Deng’s comment is a bit of a leap.”

  Stuart’s face turned instantly red. “I certainly won’t ask you to make any great intellectual leap. While we clear up this snafu with Congress, a few of my staff are off trying to get some work done. After this assault on Joanne Lewis, all I’d like is for you to make a call and ask that somebody be sent to keep an eye over things. I’d like to be sure they’re safe. You can see to that. With a call.”

  “This is about Emily Chang?”

  “Among others.”

  McBurney nodded. “They’re off somewhere sticking their noses into tracking this satellite.”

  Stuart hesitated. “It isn’t illegal.”

  “Just what is it you’re hoping to prove?”

  “Simply that they stole our property.”

  McBurney narrowed his eyes while wondering how much he could trust anything Stuart said. “This is about a nine hour flight, door-to-door, which puts us in San Francisco around oh...I’ll think about it.”

  “You’ll think about it?”

  “Yeah. I’ll think about calling up someone on the flimsiest circumstantial evidence, and ask him to devote valuable resources to a wild goose chase. Sure as hell I’m not going to wake people out of bed to do that.” He paused at the sound of a groan from underneath the blanket draping Ross. McBurney leaned forward and looked Stuart in the eye. In a harsh whisper he said, “Right now your credibility is a little, well, a little fuckin’ worthless. Be that as it may, I’ll give it some thought. I might just decide to have the FBI go in and seize your employees’ computers. Meanwhile, I have to believe the odds are pretty damn favorably stacked against anything bad happening to your staff before we reach the California coastline. Quit worrying about it, maybe get some sleep. I’d have thought you need it. I certainly do.”

  MCBURNEY OPENED HIS EYES thirty minutes later and saw Stuart staring out his window. No sleep for probably seventy-two hours and still the guy was wired.

  McBurney reached inside his suit coat and removed the folded pages of the CIA memorandum. Reading again slowly, he decided it was probably just an oversight not to have mentioned the strike on the New Jersey refinery, which had to be considered as contributing to the escalation of tensions. It certainly looked as though the attack had occurred before the dispatcher drafted the cable.

  Elsewhere, under the heading Far Asia was a summary by Naval Intelligence of numerous contractor equipment problems plaguing the Seventh Fleet. Such problems were not unusual during combat preparations; some glitches turned out to be legitimate while others were the result of sabotage. It was among this equipment tally that something caught McBurney’s eye, something he had earlier skimmed and ignored: Two cryptic references to ‘unexplained, audible report followed by malfunctioning Aegis radar array’ independently occurring aboard both an American cruiser and a Taiwanese destroyer. Initial reports cited only that the arrays turned out to be ‘...inexplicably missing.’ It occurred to McBurney anyone reading this would interpret it to mean, as he originally had, that the hardware was presumably stolen through sabotage. But was that what the dispatcher meant? How does an entire antenna array turn up ‘missing’? There was nothing to indicate if the discoveries were made while dockside or out on maneuvers.

  McBurney circled the time and date of the events. Both, he noted, were reported to naval command within one hour of each other. Just for the hell of it, he turned over the page.

  McBurney made three columns on the blank sheet, separately labeling them ‘Aegis,’ ‘GWB,’ ‘NJ.’ Below each he wrote to his b
est recollection the date and time of the event. Next, he examined the interval of time elapsed between them. A crab of fear clawed the pit of his stomach…

  McBurney sighed with relief. No pattern emerged that he could see, after all. The first interval wasn’t even close to matching the recharge cycle purported by Deng—no, he corrected himself, purported by Stuart. As Stuart had pointed out, the interval between the GW Bridge and NJ refinery attacks did match, but that was probably just a coincidence. There was nothing to suggest a methodical campaign of attacks.

  “SEE FOR YOURSELF,” McBurney offered from his notes beneath a recessed light in the aircraft’s ceiling. “The time intervals don’t support this ‘fire-recharge-fire’ scenario of yours. I even went so far as to assume...” McBurney cut himself short, realizing just how irrational he was about to sound after having slapped Stuart around for the last few days.

  “You assumed what?”

  McBurney cleared his throat. “I read a report about missing radar arrays aboard two Aegis warships. At the time it sounded nuts—it is nuts. But I gave you the benefit of the doubt, and I assumed it could be the work of this satellite weapon.” McBurney rubbed his face with his hands. He was tired, groggy, and his head was pounding to beat hell.

  “So let’s take a look at the numbers,” said Stuart, eager to play along. “Aegis radar attack, you label that time zero. GW Bridge, zero plus seventy-four hours...that’s not even close.”

  “See? Okay, now the New Jersey refinery—I used the time you said—and sure enough that’s GWB plus forty-nine hours, Deng’s recharge interval.” McBurney looked at Stuart. “But there’s nothing to suggest a pattern. Granted, both intervals meet or exceed the minimum time, but they differ. These aren’t some precision series of premeditated strikes. They’re the work of third-world terrorists.”

  Stuart studied the note, frowning deeply, rubbing his neck. He flipped the page front-to-back a few times. Among other items, page three of the CIA cable revealed the Aegis events—McBurney took pause but let him see it, figuring it was old news.

  “You don’t have to convince me that the Chinese have deployed something in orbit,” McBurney said. “But that’s a far cry from actually using it to attack the United States.”

  Stuart didn’t seem to be listening. He shook his head slowly, looked up at the ceiling a few times, stared at the feminine shape of Carolyn Ross soundly asleep. McBurney saw Stuart crack a grin. Son-of-a-bitch thinks something’s funny, does he?

  Stuart looked at him. “Ever heard of the International Date Line? Look. Put all these times in Greenwich Mean, like the military times, fix the date and...presto...how about that?”

  Stuart patiently waited for the error to become obvious while McBurney studied the modifications. He could see that he had forgotten to subtract a day from the date specified on the cable while constructing his chart. Stuart appeared to be right.

  “Jesus Christ,” McBurney breathed. He glanced at his watch. If true, it would also suggest that another attack might be imminent. Didn’t the sticky little issue of captured terrorists invalidate Stuart’s story? On the other hand, McBurney had been kicked around Washington enough to know that bad information inevitably flooded the absence of fact.

  He had no choice but to bring this to Director Burns’s attention.

  “Sam, I didn’t mention this earlier, but Joanne Lewis happens to be my daughter’s godmother.”

  McBurney frowned.

  “That’s Lewis the abducted lawyer,” Stuart clarified. “She helped me smuggle my daughter out of Dodge.”

  “Where’d you say you sent her?”

  “I didn’t.” Stuart turned his head, thinking. “I sent her to live with family on a secluded ranch in Utah. You probably remember that was after I received the threatening photos in my mailbox.”

  “How could I forget.”

  “I think the FBI shares my suspicion that Paul Devinn is still at large. I figure the CIA would probably like to get their hands on him, too. Whether Deng’s obscure warning has any merit or not, this thing with Joanne Lewis fits a disturbing pattern.”

  “So you think—”

  “I don’t know what she might have said under duress, maybe with a knife at her throat. I hadn’t told her or anyone specifically where my daughter is, at least not that I’m aware of. Who’s to say what a determined person could divine from whatever trail I might’ve left behind doing it.” Stuart looked him in the eye. “I sure wish you’d make that call and invite the FBI into this.”

  “I seem to recall hearing that sage advice somewhere before,” McBurney said in reference to their diner rendezvous.

  Stuart glared.

  Shaking his head and heaving a sigh, he glanced over the page in his hand. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  3:55 A.M. Eastern Standard Time

  PAUL DEVINN WAS COMFORTABLE with his vigil along the rear border of the property, enclosed within trees and backed up against a rise to a densely wooded bluff. Sitting with his back against an old maple tree, he steadied his elbows atop his knees and brought the Canon binoculars to his eyes. The place was new construction with a rustic, log-style exterior—strange for an affluent neighborhood of Tudor and stucco, Devinn thought for at least the third time since conducting his daylight drive-by. Did the owner’s taste suggest a tilt toward the eccentric? Of all his observations thus far—the red sentinel eye of a motion sensor staring down from under the peak of the roof, double dead-bolted doors, an exposure to neighboring homes only partially obstructed by trees—that the owner of this particular home might be eccentric, and to that extent unpredictable, most troubled Devinn. He hadn’t expected to find interior lights burning so early in the morning; so much the better. So far he had seen no sign of movement inside or out. Between the trees that surrounded his perch, the rear family room of the two-story residence came into focus.

  His assumption that the interior lights were timer-controlled was proven wrong when suddenly a seated figure slid into view on the wheels of a chair, snatched up a telephone and held it to her ear. Devinn smiled. The figure, he saw, belonged to Emily Chang.

  For quite some time he watched her pace back and forth past the windows, talking animatedly into the phone, settling back into the chair and then up, pacing again, flipping her hair, now pausing to stare out into the darkness...Devinn’s pulse quickened—a flourish of anticipation tingled his groin.

  He also saw the burly figure of a man, bearded and broad-shouldered...that would be Milton Thackeray. Devinn had been given very little time to formulate his strategy. He had been warned that this individual had a bit of a temper. Perhaps he could use that. My handler will never learn, he thought, reflecting on the similarly rapid change of direction with regard to their Thanatechnology operation. As the one burdened with implementing change, Devinn was wary of the knee-jerk flavor of his current instructions. Implicit in such haste, besides being ill conceived and reckless, was his own expendability. Lee’s suspicions appeared to be on the money in one respect. Something was definitely playing out here and it wasn’t a house warming party.

  Devinn lowered the field glasses. Emily Chang and her work ethic. Whether she was screwing Stuart or not, why would anyone willingly submit to being so ruthlessly exploited? At least the leaders of her native country knew how to keep a leash on corporate greed.

  Devinn tucked the binoculars inside his jacket in preparation to leave.

  102

  FBI SPECIAL AGENT PETER KOSMALSKI returned the handset slowly to its cradle and studied it with a considered scowl.

  “That sounded like trouble,” observed the Deputy Assistant Director of the Counter-terrorism Division, who voiced his observation in passing, not looking up from the report on Kosmalski’s desk. On all matters of the Joint Counter Terrorism Task Force, the program for which Kosmalski was acting special agent-in-charge, Lance Lee was Kosmalski’s boss. Given also that Lance Lee’s star was apparently on the rise, he had lately become Peter Kosmalski’s special pain-in
-the-ass.

  “It could be,” Kosmalski replied. “Or it could be the beginning of closure on a complicated case.” And personal Kudos from the Director, the agent hoped. He watched his unwelcome visitor, edit pen at the ready, peruse the JCTF Executive Summary. His great preference would have been to simply fax it across town to headquarters and that way be done with it. “The call was actually from an Agency guy on the task force.”

  “Early in the day for Agency boys.”

  “Not for all of ’em, I guess.”

  Lance Lee flipped to the next page, glanced at Kosmalski, and returned his eyes to the summary. “I don’t see anything here that I can say about the suspect Mousavi’s documents, the pedigree of his counterfeit passports, who might’ve prepared them, who else might be using them...”

  No shit you can’t say anything, because I don’t have anything. “The story on the student visa is a common one. Neither legat’s come through yet on the passports or H1-B. They’re working it.”

  Lee nodded profoundly while perusing, jotting, deleting. “So how are you going to handle it?”

  “Pester and threaten. And they’ll pester and threaten the State Department. What else can I do?”

  Lee formed a slow smile. “I meant the Baltimore assault case. You know, that Agency call…?”

  “Oh, sorry. Pester and threaten. Do our part to prevent somebody else getting hurt.”

  Lee looked down at the summary. “Where is it listed?”

  “No, sir, that’s not a Task Force item. It’s part of my day job. There’s this nasty corporate espionage affair that keeps spreading roots.”

  “I see.”

  103

  SPECIAL AGENT EDWARD HILDEBRANDT stood beside the track of a 50-ton Caterpillar, its engine idling at slow gallop, and surveyed some five city blocks of decimation. Debris-pattern digital imagery analysis acquired by helicopter had allowed investigators to establish the epicenter of the principal blast zone as the 127-foot olefin refinery cracking tower. The engineering-laden masterpiece of piping and pressure vessels had been leveled to scrap.