by T I WADE
“Whatever this is, it is not supposed to be there,” he thought to himself. “It seems to be some sort of fuse control device, and it looks like the device can be activated from external sources—maybe from a radio frequency.” The security guards entered with their daily work—electronic parts to dissect—and he had no choice but to quickly sweep the table with the arm of his coat and onto the floor around him. “I hope the floor sweeper doesn’t have good eyes,” Lee thought to himself, and got on with his work.
***
Ten months later, Lee, Lin and Ling found themselves in the largest aircraft Lee had ever seen. The last three months had been eye-opening for Lee. His daily tasks of dissecting gadgets were long gone. Instead, his days were comprised of learning American English and deciphering codes for security doors, computer codes, and everything a spy would need to do. He learned how to take a photo of himself with any form of camera and then take someone else’s photo ID card and replace their photo with his. They practiced on each other’s IDs in the class, and then tried to use the changed ID in dozens of doors, security panels, and card sliders. On computers, he was given new CDs with code decipher programs on them so they could try to unlock their college workstations. He spent a couple of days with his wife learning to press shirts and trousers, and mopped floors with an old grey coat on. He was taught how to look older by graying his hair, and smaller by hunching his back and letting his shoulders droop down as he mopped. He was taught how to flip meat patties and add cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and pickles to a vile smelling hamburger and operate a milkshake machine. And lastly, he was taught how to bus tables in a restaurant and satisfy snotty American customers to the point that they didn’t even notice him take their plates.
To Lin, it was funny to see her husband and a few others arrive at her place of work and try to control the computerized clothing hangers as well as she could. She taught them how to press and wash and disappear in a laundry by doing things without being asked.
“I hear you can sweep floors as good as I can,” stated the woman, as Lee passed a floor cleaner in the hallway one day. Lee was not going to be fooled again, as he now carefully studied any floor cleaner before he passed them. He had seen this woman for the whole week, and today was Friday and time to collect his weekly paycheck. This floor sweeper, he thought, was a little shorter than the one he was checking for, but this floor sweeper was a woman and that fact had put him off his guard from the second day. She looked about 65-70 years old and had long, straight black hair. They had practiced hunch-backing in their training, but this floor sweeper was a woman, had a thick waist, long grey hair, and did not look like she was trying to fool anyone.
Lee stopped in shock and did not want to turn around. “Is that you?” he asked.
“A woman can always get away with more than a man can,” was the reply from the familiar voice he had been checking for the whole year. Lee turned around and was shocked at the disguise. “Hide more skin and it takes less work,” continued the man. “A wig, a blanket around my waist, a fixed ID badge, a grey coat, a mop and bucket and a closed mouth can get me anywhere I want to go. Remember, your Chinese eyes are your advantage in America, Lee Wang. Show them and cover your lower face with a shawl and very few will ask questions in a low-security building. As you have been taught, high security is much harder, but the only real difference is time. If people are used to you, they will become blind to you. Now let’s go and get a cup of tea. Your time here is over.”
Lee watched the man take off the wig, the grey coat, and the small wrapped blanket around his waist; put the bucket, mop, wig and clothing neatly on the bucket; stand up; and pull a comb out of his blue suit pocket to comb his black hair. As usual, there were the familiar bows when he entered the American-style cafeteria on the ground floor.
“You are to live in America starting next week,” stated the older man. “You have been trained to seek out new electrical inventions or products about to come onto the market in all forms of electronics. We want to break these new consumer goods or military goods down and start making parts for them. Your jobs for us are reasonably safe. Always remember that the Americans believe that they are the biggest world power and nobody can infiltrate their security and systems. They are careful about other companies trying to steal their secrets, but a foreign man who doesn’t speak their language and who can always disappear will never be seen as a threat.”
The older man paused for a moment to give Lee a minute to digest the information before continuing. “You will be given papers to start your legal arrival process into the United States. If you follow the guidelines, you will become a citizen within five to seven years. You will be given $2,000 in American currency to help you get settled in the United States. You will arrive in San Francisco and then travel by bus to the home of American software engineering called Silicon Valley. The closest city is San Jose. Someone will meet you at the airport by the taxi pool. He will guide you to transportation to San Jose where there is an area called Cupertino Village. Book into a cheap hotel room and search out a small apartment you can afford near Cupertino Village. From there you are on your own, so just disappear for a few weeks. Don’t worry, you will be surrounded by other Chinese nationals and everything you need can be found in Cupertino, or in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Both of you will have work visas and you, Lee, must find a job in any electronics company as soon as you can. Your wife will find something to suit her.”
“But my main job is to spy?” interrupted Lee.
“No, of course not,” replied the older man. “Your job is to seek out new electronics. Once you think you have found something like… remember the engine-control system from Toyota?”
Lee nodded.
“If you find something like that, we want a copy. You phone the person you met at the airport and tell him what you’ve found, where it is, what security there is in the building, how he can get in, and any problems he might come up against. He will do the rest of the work. That gives you the opportunity to carry on safely and seek out your next object. Do you understand?”
Again Lee nodded.
The man continued. “For every good piece of equipment you find for us, $1,000 will be deposited into a bank account for your daughter Ling’s university education in America.”
“A person must pay for university in America?” Lee questioned in awe.
For another hour, Lee was grilled on what was expected of him. Silently, he worked out in his mind that, based on the information the older man had just given him, he needed to find at least 50 new inventions or gadgets for Zedong Electronics over about 15 years to pay for Ling’s university education in the United States.
Now, Lee was ready to go to America.
Chapter 6
The Smart Family
Will Smart was a career detective with the L.A.P.D. and the Hollywood Police Department, and it was his last day, and the last day of July 2009, in the surroundings in which he had spent the last ten years working. A few months earlier, he had filed a request to be transferred to the Lancaster Police Department north of Los Angeles. The Smart family had recently moved out of downtown L.A. and purchased a house in growing Antelope Acres—a more rural community north of Los Angeles, south of the city of Lancaster, and not far from Edwards Air Force base.
The Smarts were tired of the day-to-day crime in the city, even though they lived slightly north in San Fernando. Will had worked long and hard since he had been promoted to the detective branch in 2007. It had been fine for a while, living in the never-ending grind of L.A. His wife, Maggie, was doing her final year at UCLA and studying for her Ph.D. The kids went to a reasonably good and safe public school in San Fernando, and life was average for this Californian family.
It had not been difficult to get a transfer out of the city since the LAPD were also contracted to run the Lancaster Police Department. All he was asking for was a transfer within the same system, but just to another area.
A farewell party was in full swing
and he thanked many of his colleagues who had gone through the same promotions and grinds of the daily and often dangerous workload with him. Even his Chief was there and, within the ranks, not known to be a friendly guy. Will and Chief Bennett lived in the same community in San Fernando, and were part of only a small minority of African-Americans in the area. San Fernando had an African-American population of less than 2%. Over time, they had commuted together into work and had developed a form of friendship. Will actually thought the Chief was going to miss him.
In November 2008, Will’s father had passed away. He had been diagnosed with a cancer he did not often talk about, and lived alone in Burbank after the passing of Will’s mother ten years earlier. Will was an only child, and naturally inherited the family’s net wealth of over a million dollars. His father and mother had worked in Hollywood on movie sets for decades—he as a carpenter and she as a seamstress—and both had met, married, and done well for themselves.
Will had actually been introduced to several film stars, and his favorite had been John Wayne, whom he had met a couple of times. The famous star had even come over for dinner once when he was young and had made a large impact on young Will’s life. Of course, after that dinner, the young boy’s favorite movie was “Brannigan.”
A young Will had grown up in Hollywood, survived school, gotten his diploma, and entered the police force as soon as he was able. All his life he had loved to solve puzzles and problems, and with his totally analytical brain, he was quickly nicknamed “Smart Dude” on the police force. In 2005, all police officers had completed a “DUDE” program. “DUDE” had stood for Diligence, Undercover, Detective work, and Education, and was meant to help the average policeman on the beat look at a new crime scene and memorize all surrounding information before the scene was entered by other official personnel. Small bits of evidence were often lost between the discovery of the crime and the arrival of the teams who sifted for information. Will had excelled in this, and his photographic memory always remembered the necessary “DUDE” tasks, like possible tire marks, cigarette butts, people’s faces in the surrounding crowd, odors, and anything that looked amiss. Even the police chief called him “Smart Dude” because several homicides had been solved by the clicking memory of Will Smart.
Maggie was and always would be a “computer whiz.” That’s what her father called her at the age of 15, growing up just outside Dana Point on the West coast an hour south of Los Angeles. Her father Pete and mother Joanne Bridges were business owners, and ran a gas station close to the highway between L.A. and San Diego.
In 1986, new home computers were the “in” thing. DOS was a new language, and it hadn’t taken young Maggie long to learn the new language, become able to write new code, make programs run faster, or just fix them when they broke. The television-like screens played simple computer games and her favorite was Tetris.
Both parents worked hard and Maggie and her baby sister Joanna were usually at home after the yellow school bus dropped them off. Pete and Joanne got home at about six, once their night crew of two employees arrived. Joanne worked on dinner while Pete spent valuable time checking his daughters’ homework and getting them ready for the next day’s school bus.
It was a very happy house. They lived in a decent rural neighborhood on a large lot with only three other houses on a dirt road they called a street, and only heard the continuous highway noise when the wind blew in the right direction. Both girls were at the top of their classes at school and Joanne always told visiting friends that they both had their parents’ brains in the right amounts. The gas station had been in the family for 40 years and Pete’s father had originally built the wooden structure in the mid-1950s. He had retired early and wanted Pete to run it, so he sold it to his elder son for $50 and retired to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he had grown up as a child.
The young family never had time to visit the islands after the purchase, but Pete’s father and mother often came to visit and check up on them and the gas station every couple of years. The old-fashioned gas station had a country store on one side, a porch on the front, and only two gas pumps. It was painted in rich, bright colors, and by the 1980s it was a landmark famous for its originality in the surrounding area of modern developments.
A bell always sounded when someone drove in, just like the old days, and now with everything going electronic, even that had lost a little of its old charm. The country store made the most income, selling old-fashioned bottles and jars of produce made by local people—salsas, sauces, cakes, cookies, beer from microbreweries just starting up in the area and everything else a modern farmers’ market would sell. Pete and Joanne made a very comfortable living from the business. Pete’s mother made sure that they never ran out of homemade products from St. Croix, and the clothing, trinkets and hot sauces were always big sellers.
Maggie easily obtained her high school diploma, and with the aid of a three-year scholarship she had won in a computer software competition in 1990, she entered UCLA as a freshman majoring in electrical engineering. She found dorm life at the university to be rather close and noisy after growing up in the country. She looked down at people who thought drugs and alcohol were important and was called the class snob for keeping her nose in the air most of the time.
In her third year, she won a second one-semester scholarship in a Pepsi competition and was able to spend a fully paid-for term at MIT across the country in Boston during her senior year. At MIT, life was more old-fashioned compared to the “plastic” Los Angeles life, as she called it. The school was so much older, and the students much more conservative. She was pleased to be in a room with three beds, a bathroom, and a small lounge/kitchen with two other girls—both from completely different backgrounds.
Roommate Sally Powers always seemed on high alert, always in strike mode, and in “much like a cat looking for a rat” mode. Maggie’s other roommate, Martie Roebels, was a very tall, long-legged blonde who was easy to befriend. All three girls liked each other immediately and a long-lasting friendship sprang up in the four months they lived together. Boys were out, as were binge drinking, parties, and unnecessary time off from studying. Study they did, and they enjoyed every minute of it.
All three were fascinated with their studies, all three attended the same classes, and all three visited the local airfield for the first time a week or two after the beginning of the semester when both Sally and Martie felt a need to touch a joystick. Maggie was dumbfounded about “joysticks,” and had a totally wrong idea about “joysticks” until the other two arrived at the airport. Laughing, they explained to their young African-American friend that she had the wrong joystick in mind and that yes, they were at an airport, and that yes, they were going flying. It was a fun joke at Maggie’s expense, and she thumped both girls on the arm when she realized the trick they had played on her.
The look on Maggie’s face in the rear seat as Martie taxied the Cessna 172 out onto the runway with Sally as co-pilot for their first flight was priceless. With both girls keeping an eye on the rear seat, they slowly watched as Maggie’s reaction went slowly from shock and surprise to that look when a person realizes that life is a beautiful thing. It was over the town of Gloucester, north of Boston, when Maggie’s face first turned serene while viewing the sea several hundred feet below them and sunbathers looking up at them from small beaches here and there. There wasn’t much said during the first flight, each girl enjoying their own surroundings.
They landed and had lunch in the flight school’s small cafeteria and all three again sat in silence, both pilots waiting for words to burst forth from the new flyer.
“I want to hold a joystick!” the still dreamy-looking Maggie finally exclaimed, and all three girls erupted into laughter.
That afternoon, on their second flight, Maggie and Martie swapped places while Sally flew in the left seat. Slowly, and much like her instructor had allowed her to fly the aircraft for the first time so many years ago, Sally taught Maggie and let her
have control of the joystick between her legs. Once she had control of the joystick, her feet were allowed to control the two rudder pedals and Maggie’s fate was doomed forever—she was totally hooked on flying—so much so that their only outside activity, other than studying, was driving out to the airfield and flying as much as possible. Martie was certainly not short on cash, nor were Sally and Maggie.
Maggie had 47 hours and a new private pilot’s license by the end of their semester together. Martie had completed her twin-engine instrument flight-rating (IFR) and added another 40 hours to her logbook, and Sally had managed her first ten hours on a twin turboprop aircraft, a King Air. Sally was two years ahead of Martie, but who cared! Martie had often promised Sally that she would catch up with Sally’s flight ratings, but she never could.
The semester came to an end and tears flowed as the three girls parted, all three with the best results achievable. They made a pact on their last night to always communicate and visit each other and the girls went their separate ways far stronger, far more mature, and far more open to life than when they had arrived at MIT four months earlier.
Maggie returned to UCLA, and it wasn’t long before a police detective came knocking on the family’s door one night. There had been a murder somewhere in Hollywood and Detective Smart wanted camera footage from the gas station. Since it was 9:00 pm at night, he was directed by the night staff to the owner’s house to get permission. The police detective was young and extremely good-looking, Maggie noticed, and she watched his serious discussion with her father with a hint of amusement on her face.
