Wall of Night

by Grant Blackwood

  The crowd broke, half of the protesters running up Gagarina and Karl Marx Streets, the rest fleeing toward the trees along the Okhiopkov Theatre—toward the surviving BRT.

  No, no, no … Basnin thought, praying the BRT commander was seasoned enough to show restraint. Please, God, don’t—

  The rapid, overlapping boom of the 14.5 mm cannon cut through the night. The cannon’s shells—each larger than a man’s thumb and traveling at twice the speed of sound—raked through the crowd. Bodies began to drop. People stumbled about, some missing limbs, some torn open by shards of flying stone and concrete, still others falling under the crush of the stampede.

  Behind him, Basnin could hear his driver yelling into the radio, “Cease fire, cease fire!”

  The cannon stopped firing.

  The square fell into silence. In the distance Basnin could hear screaming. A pall of smoke drifted over the square. In the distance came screaming. Basnin could see bodies writhing on the ground. A man in a fur hat struggled to his knees. Eyes wide, he reached across his body, feeling for an arm that was now just a bloody stump. A young girl’s voice called, “Mother … Mother …”

  Basnin stared at the scene, stunned and momentarily confused. Oh God, what have we done … ? He turned to the driver. “Call the hospital! Tell them to send ambulances! Quickly!”

  16

  New Zealand

  If he hadn’t known better, Tanner might have mistaken the view for a scene straight from a Norwegian postcard. He now knew why this region of New Zealand was called the “Fjordlands.”

  Carved by glaciers during the last ice age, the southwestern flank of New Zealand is crosscut with towering mountains, ice blue lakes, tumbling waterfalls, and alpine forests, all of which made the thirty-five-mile-long Milford Track one of the country’s biggest attractions.

  After some haggling, they found a guide in Sandfly Point who was willing to drive them up the mountain to where they now stood, Giant’s Gate Falls overlooking Lake Ada. Together they stepped to the edge and looked down. Beneath them the mountain dropped away to the lake’s surface nearly four thousand feet below. “Wow,” Cahil murmured.

  “Amen,” Tanner whispered.

  According to Maori folklore, the Fjordlands were created millions of years ago by a giant who, after a particularly long day of world walking, had unwittingly dragged the tip of his spear across land, allowing the ocean to rush into the gouges.

  Cahil said, “Almost makes me want to sing The Sound of Music.”

  Tanner laughed. “The hills are alive with elusive Guoanbu spies?”

  “It does have a nice ring to it.”

  “Sing on. I promise not to tell Julie Andrews.”

  “Oaks is sure about this? It doesn’t strike me as a likely hangout for a retired Chinese spook. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. Given Walt’s track record, it could be worse.”

  The last two “vacations” Oaken had planned for them had involved a sinking ship in Alaska and a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. By comparison, this looked suspiciously pleasant.

  “He swears this is it,” Tanner replied and pointed across the lake to the snowcapped peak of Mount Ada. “Fong’s ranch should be in the valley on the other side.”

  “How do we get there?”

  Tanner looked south toward McKay Falls until he spotted the winding trail that led down to the shore. “Down there,” Briggs said. “We can catch the ferry. After that, we’re off the map.”

  The final phase of Oaken’s search for Moh Yen Fong, the Guoanbu agent known as Genoa, turned out to be the easiest. Armed with Fong’s true identity, Oaken had again turned to the Kyung database but, unsurprisingly, found little help there. It was unlikely the Guoanbu would either mention Moh Yen Fong by name or continue to use his code name after Ledger was finished.

  Oaken turned to ECHELON. Cloaked in equal parts myth, suspicion, and secrecy, ECHELON is a National Security Agency project created to monitor millions of e-mails, faxes, telexes, and, unbeknownst to most, capture phone calls and radio transmissions.

  If, for example, a DEA informant reports to his controllers that a Columbian judge has been targeted for assassination by a drug cartel, the NSA can program ECHELON to scan its captures for word convergences such as the judge’s name, “kill,” and “bomb,” then flag them for attention.

  Though ECHELON rarely produces ready-to-wear or even earth-shattering intelligence, it does give the U.S. and British intelligence communities an unequalled view of the world’s ever-changing communications puzzle.

  With a little horsepower from Dick Mason, Oaken’s request went straight to the NSA’s director of archives, who punched in Oaken’s search string.

  It took ECHELON thirty-eight hours to search the twelve years’ worth of data it had accumulated since Ledger’s demise, but in the end Oaken owed his breakthrough not to a painstaking review of the output, but to the meticulous record keeping of the People’s Liberation Army’s Bureau of Personnel.

  Guoanbu operative or not, Moh Yen Fong was first and foremost a military man; consequently, every detail of his life, from doctor’s visits to performance evaluations was meticulously recorded.

  With the help of further searches to narrow the field, Oaken finally found a telex from the Bureau of Personnel to Fong’s last command posting. An NSA translator quickly recognized it as a separation of service report. “Basically it’s a DD-two-fourteen form—what our people get when they retire or are discharged,” the translator told him.

  The report listed Fong’s home address, his phone number, next of kin, and most importantly Oaken would soon learn, his e-mail address.

  Oaken returned to the ECHELON output, this time using only Fong’s e-mail address. He got over two-hundred matches, which he further filtered by frequently repeated words and phrases. Time and again, the same ones kept appearing: “Te Ami,” “Ada,” “great-grandfather,” and “sheep.”

  Knowing “Te Anu” and “Ada” were both geographical names found only in New Zealand, Oaken hacked his way into Auckland’s Ministry of Immigration’s computer system and started hunting. It took less than two hours. “Believe it or not,” Oaken told Tanner, “New Zealand has had a sizable Chinese diaspora community since the mid-1880s. They farm, fish, herd sheep—”

  “And this is where Fong ran off to?”

  “Yep. He probably had a hell of a time convincing the Guoanbu to let him out of the country, but that’s where he went. His family has owned sheep land there for nearly a hundred years.”

  “So, he traded in spying for sheep ranching,” Cahil said. “Talk about a career change.”

  “There’s a downside, though,” Oaken said. “The Guoanbu has had a security detail assigned to Fong since he moved. At least eight men, living on the ranch full-time with him; they probably work as laborers.”

  “Chinese cowboys,” Tanner said. “This should be interesting.”

  It was midmorning by the time they reached the ferry landing.

  They walked to the end of the deserted jetty, where they found a log-and-plank ferry bumping lazily against the moorings. A man in a red parka lay on a chaise lounge on the deck.

  “Morning,” Tanner called.

  “Morning, Wanna cross?”

  “If you can squeeze us in.”

  The man chuckled. “I think I can manage it.” He nodded at their backpacks. “You’re going the wrong way if you’re looking for Milford Track.”

  Tanner smiled. “We’re on the economy tour.”

  Thirty minutes later they were standing on the eastern shore of Lake Ada and staring up at the mountainside as the ferry chugged its way back across the lake. “Please tell me we don’t have to climb that thing,” Cahil murmured.

  “Not unless the map is wrong. We follow the ridge for about five miles; once there we should find a pass that’ll take us through to the high meadows where Fong’s ranch is.”

  Washington, O.C.
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  “Do we have any casualty figures yet?” asked President Martin.

  “Initial estimates say fifty-four,” replied Mason. “Including six children. That figure may change as more information comes in, but not by much.”

  News of the “Irkutsk Massacre” had spread quickly, which Mason found particularly surprising given the remoteness of the location. During the Cold War news of this kind of incident may have never reached the West. Nowadays, CNN, Reuters, and API had it on the wire within hours.

  “What do we know?” asked Bousikaris.

  “Not much. There were over three hundred protesters. Some reports say there were Federation tanks present, others say just scout vehicles—like BRTs or BMPs. One of them exploded, cause unknown, and the mob bolted. The surviving vehicle’s commander opened fire.”

  “God almighty,” Bousikaris said. “What kind of armament are we talking about?”

  “Heavy machine gun. Reports say the shooting lasted less than ten seconds. Judging by the number of casualties, it was probably a 14.5 millimeter—essentially a sixty-caliber machine gun.”

  “What’s happening now?” asked President Martin.

  “Both the Red Cross and the UN are offering aid, but so far no reply from Moscow.”

  “Typical Russian mentality,” Martin said.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. Right now they’re trying to figure out what happened. Irkutsk is seven hours from Moscow. Until they get the right people on the scene, they’re smart to keep quiet.”

  “Especially if you’re trying to cover something up,” Bousikaris said.

  Mason didn’t respond. Even he, a Cold Warrior to the core, knew that no government—communist, socialist, or otherwise—was either purely good or purely evil. He was surprised Martin and Bousikaris had jumped to that conclusion; reactionism was a dangerous quality for a president—especially one like Martin, whose ego rarely let him admit mistakes. As far as Mason was concerned, imprudence, conceit, and obstinacy had caused more wars than anything else.

  “Only time will tell whether they’ll try to gloss it over,” Mason said. “The question is, how is this going to affect the presidential elections? If Bulganin’s smart, he’ll use Irkutsk.”

  “How so?” asked Martin.

  “Polarization. Within hours we’ll probably see him speaking out: ‘Are these the actions of a caring, responsive government? A government that guns down citizens who simply want fair treatment?’—that sort of thing. If he can get the voters whipped up, it’ll work to his advantage.”

  “Vote their hearts, not their minds,” said Martin. “No room in the polling booth for both.”

  “Exactly.”

  “We need to start thinking about a response. The world is going to be watching which way we go. We’ll need all the facts, Dick. I assume you’ll keep Howard informed.”

  Mason read between the lines: Let’s see which way the political wind is blowing before we commit ourselves. If Bulganin was able to turn this incident to his advantage, he might soon be the next president of the Russian Federation—in which case Martin would want to be on the winning side.

  Damn the issues, full speed ahead, thought Mason.

  Holystone Office

  Latham’s plea to Oaken was straightforward: Help me get my family to safety, then give me the backup I need to finish the Baker investigation.

  Straightforward but fraught with danger, Leland Dutcher thought when Oaken approached him. Dutcher knew Latham well enough to take seriously his suspicions, but as had Oaken, he wondered whether Charlie’s thinking was governed more by the father in him, or by the FBI agent in him.

  If he agreed to help, he would be pitting Holystone against both the FBI and the Department of Justice—and given the nature of Holystone’s work, that was the kind of exposure they couldn’t afford.

  Latham accepted a cup of coffee from Dutcher and leaned back in one of the overstuffed chairs in Holystone’s conference room. “How is she?” said Dutcher.

  “Better,” said Latham. “She’s gonna be okay.”

  “I’m glad, Charlie. I understand they found the car.”

  Latham nodded. “It belongs to an elderly woman in Chevy Chase; she hadn’t driven it in two months. She didn’t even know it was missing. They found it abandoned twenty miles outside Williamsburg, full of cigarette butts and empty beer bottles.”

  “Window dressing?” Oaken said.

  “That’s my guess. Somebody’s trying to make it look like a stalker or a joyride gone bad.”

  “Smart,” said Dutcher.

  “And damned frightening,” Oaken added. “It means whoever took it knew the car’s lack of use would buy them time; same thing with the butts and bottles. It would send the police in the wrong direction. Unless it was random, that is.”

  “It wasn’t,” Latham said. “The Guoanbu is methodical. Whether they planned to go after Samantha from the start, I don’t know, but you can be sure they didn’t do this on a whim. It was insurance. Truth is, I doubt they were trying to kill her. Something like that … It would be bad, but after a few weeks I’d be back at work. This way … it was designed to tie me up.”

  “When will it be safe to move her?”

  Latham sat forward. “You’re going to help me?”

  Dutcher nodded. “You have to understand, though: Our way of doing things may be a little more … gray than you’re used to.”

  “I’m okay with that. The people we’re up against don’t give a damn about the law. If we have to play a little dirty to get them, so be it.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t go that far,” Dutcher said. “First things first: We need to get Bonnie and your girls someplace safe. Once that’s done, we start hunting.”

  17

  New Zealand

  It took most of the afternoon for Tanner and Cahil to traverse Mount Ada’s southern spine and reach the pass. The trees along the path suddenly fell away to reveal a meadow of knee-high grass and wildflowers that curved out of sight around the mountain’s lower slopes.

  “Seems almost a shame to walk on it,” Tanner said.

  “I think somebody beat us to it.” Cahil pointed at a wide groove in the center of the meadow.

  “Horses.”

  “Yeah. This high up, it’s probably the preferred method of travel. The only question is, are they from Fong’s watchers or not.”

  Tanner sat down on his haunches, pulled out the map, and made a few quick calculations. “The ranch is in the next valley—seven miles, give or take. If they’re patrolling this far out, it’s a sure sign they’re on the ball.”

  The closer they could get to the ranch before having to go to ground, the easier time they’d have planning what Bear had come to call “The Great Kiwi Fong Snatch.”

  “Any preference?” Tanner asked Cahil. “Lost hikers or daring botanists?”

  “Lost hikers. I couldn’t tell a daisy from a sunflower.”

  A light wind swirled down the valley, making the meadow’s chest-high grass sway like waves. They were less than two miles into the meadow when Tanner heard the distant clomp of hoofbeats over the swishing of the grass. “Company,” he whispered over his shoulder.

  They both peered ahead, gazing over the top of the grass.

  Closer now, the whinny of a horse. Thirty feet to their right, two horses materialized out of the grass. Sitting atop them were a pair of grim-faced Chinese men.

  “Smile,” Tanner whispered. “Wave.”

  Cahil broke into a grin and waved. “Hello, there.”

  Neither man wore cowboy gear, Tanner saw, but they did look cowboy tough, with ruddy, weathered faces. Each was dressed in khaki BDUs. Hanging from each saddle was what looked like an oversized fanny pack. Tanner knew better: Fastpacks. Inside the pouches would be guns, probably H&K or Grenoir compact assault rifles.

  “You are on private property,” one of the men said.

  “Really?” Tanner said. “We thought t
his was the Medford Track.”

  “You mean Milford—Milford Track.”

  “Oh, right, sorry.”

  “The track is that way, across the lake.”

  “Are you sure?” Tanner pulled out his map. “I mean, it’s right here.” Pointing at the map, he started walking toward them. The second rider eased his horse left and dropped his hand to the fastpack. Very cool, Tanner thought. “See. We’re right here.”

  The man didn’t look at the map. “It is across the lake. You are on private property.”

  Tanner and Cahil exchanged glances. Briggs walked over to him and they leaned over the map.

  “Ideas?” Cahil whispered.

  “I doubt we can take them. They’d have their guns out before we got two steps.”

  “I agree,” Cahil said. “We might get one, but not the other.”

  “Plus, who knows what’ll happen if they don’t check in.” Tanner turned back to the riders. “You’re sure this isn’t the Minifred Track?”

  “Milford Track. Yes, I am sure. You must leave now.”

  Tanner shrugged. “Okay. Sorry for the trouble.”

  He and Cahil shouldered their packs, turned around, and started walking.

  An hour later they were crouched in the trees at the mouth of the pass, watching the riders retreat across the meadow until they disappeared from view. The wind had picked up and dark clouds roiled along the upper slopes as the sun dropped toward the horizon.

  “Well, that answers a few questions,” Cahil said.

  Tanner checked his watch. “We’ll lay low and wait a few hours.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we find out just how good Fong’s watcher’s are.”

  With nightfall came the rain, a steady downpour that soaked their clothes and chilled them to the bone. Lightning flashed along the foothills, casting the valley in strobe light.