“Let me make sure I got this,” Michael said. “You’re basically telling me Nixon came to China in seventy-one to look for a Nazi airplane?”
“Look, I can’t speculate as to every reason Nixon had for his presidential trip to China. I can’t even tell you how much he knew about the Company’s plan to locate the Horten. But I can tell you this. Posing as his security detail provided us with about as good a cover as we were going to get back then. We traveled up and down these hills doing bogus security reconnaissance in anticipation of his visit. Chinese Intelligence followed us the whole time but we still managed to cover a lot of ground.” Ted paused. “In the end it didn’t matter much though. We didn’t find a thing.”
“And Carter and Clinton? Bush?”
“Same deal. Though I was out of the Agency by the time Bush came around. Word has it that the British did the same thing with their security teams. And the Japanese. Everybody wanted a piece of that lost Nazi tech.”
They reached the main road. Locals still sat on bicycles, backpackers wandering up and down the street.
“Your dad stayed with the project and became something of an expert on the Horten. The way I hear it, he even kept the search for it alive when nobody else seemed to think it was worth finding. Your father realized that the Horten was more than a plane. It was the holy grail of the energy crisis. Its reactor could solve the planet’s energy needs and redraw the world map in the process. If the word passion wasn’t as played out as a Thai hooker, I’d say he had a passion for it — a passion to find that technology. He managed to get himself reassigned to the project multiple times that I know of. It looks like this last time, with Kate here, he just didn’t come back.”
Michael slowed to a standstill, crickets singing in the sweet night air. He took a long moment breathing it all in before finally speaking. “So let me make sure I’ve got this,” Michael said. “She’s MI6, he’s CIA, now you’re CIA too? Did any of you ever consider the private sector? You make better money and you’re less likely to get shot.”
“No job security,” Ted said. “But you’re right about the getting shot part. That’s why I took early retirement. I work part-time as a lecturer for the Royal Asiatic Society now. With the exception of what happened to your father, I haven’t looked back since.”
“So is there a reason you didn’t tell me any of this back in Hong Kong?”
“Yeah. You were better off not knowing.”
Michael shot a glance at Kate, but her expression was hard to read. There was no doubt she wanted to hear more, but her body language seemed to suggest that the discussion was between Michael and Ted and that she should be left out of it. It didn’t matter. Michael could conduct this conversation on his own.
“Okay, I’ll bite. Why do I need to know now?”
“Because I can see now there’s no keeping you out of it.” Ted lowered his voice. “When I first brought you into this, I was thinking closure. I thought the whole mess would end with Larry. That he’d cop to what he knew and you could go to the police with it and put the whole thing behind you. With everything you’ve been though, both before and now, I knew that would be important to you.”
“And now?”
“Now I can see you’re in way deeper than that. Nothing I say or don’t say is going to make a difference. And if that’s the case, you might as well know it all.”
“That’s it?”
“Pretty much.” Ted turned back toward the lobby. “Now get some rest. I’ll meet up with you two in the morning.”
Watching him go, Michael finally opened his mouth. “Ted?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
“No problem, kid.” Ted grinned in the moonlight and continued on his way.
25
MOBI WAS ESCORTED out of the restroom and down a waiting elevator by two men who were about as far removed from the prototypical laid back JPL employee as you could get. They wore buzz cuts and plain gray suits, and even though they weren’t in uniform per se, it wasn’t much of a stretch to see that they were military, most likely Air Force like Rand. The men silently escorted him to a secure lower level of the laboratory that Mobi had never been to. Though this lower level of the facility was officially designated as storage, it was rumored to be much more: a covert laboratory for projects requiring many times the normal civilian security clearance. So despite the pain from the handcuffs on his wrists and the foreboding in the pit of his stomach, Mobi’s eyes were wide as his escorts led him down the worn corridor. A moment later, a key card was swiped through a cipher lock and Mobi found himself inside a mid-sized room.
The space was closer to a broker’s office than the torture chamber Mobi had been expecting. An Ultrasuede sofa sat in one corner, a Mission Revival desk in the other. One of the military types removed Mobi’s cuffs while the other entered some kind of code into a Blackberry. Then, without another word, they both exited the room, the steel reinforced wood paneled door clicking shut behind them. Less than five seconds later, an automatic panel slid open on the far wall and Deputy Director Alvarez entered the space.
“I see you made it past security,” Alvarez said, handing Mobi a cup of coffee. “I’d have spared you the escort, but that’s how they run this section of the lab.
“Exactly which section are we talking about?” Mobi asked.
“The fun one.”
Alvarez beckoned Mobi to follow her out the open panel in the wall. He was right to think of the preceding area as some kind of waiting room, because the corridor he found himself in was all business, though significantly more sterile business than Mobi was used to. The original structures at JPL dated back to the nineteen forties and even though there had been substantial construction since then, the buildings, for the most part, had a tired feel to them. This underground corridor, however, was different. The walls were sheathed in white polycarbonate panels that bore no sign of wear, while an illuminated yellow line embedded in the floor indicated direction of travel. It was weird. Even though Mobi realized that the corridor was probably designed in this way to minimize airborne contaminants, he still felt like he was treading the corridors of the Death Star. If R2D2 had reared his head, Mobi had no doubt he would have chirped right back at him and taken another slug on his java.
Alvarez led Mobi past several closed doors into a marginally wider section of corridor overlooking a massive clean room. Mobi now realized that his hypothesis as to why the walls were coated in the polymer panels was correct. It would be a means of keeping the particulate count in the air low given that this corridor no doubt provided entry and egress to the clean room, a room that unequivocally had to stay sterile. There was a reason for that of course; it was because they assembled spacecraft there. And looking down through the transparent polymer panels of the observation corridor, Mobi laid eyes on a team of scientists in bunny suits tending to the most unusual spacecraft he’d ever seen.
“The JPL Horten Project,” Alvarez said.
Mobi took a moment. He had seen the blueprints. He knew what the Horten was supposed to look like and this wasn’t it. Not even close. The object in question was roughly the shape of a shallow bowl, about fifteen feet in diameter, and composed of what looked like a molybdenum skeleton covered with a titanium skin. Inside the bowl were a series of outtake valves and tubes that clearly constituted an engine or propulsion device of some kind. It was only partially assembled. Mobi could see that. But he was having difficulty imagining what he saw as part of a larger machine. Still, Alvarez was a serious woman. If she said this was the JPL Horten Project, this was the JPL Horten Project.
“Not impressed?” Alvarez asked.
“No, it’s not that.”
“Is it that in the last however many minutes you’ve been arrested, brought to a level of the lab that isn’t supposed to exist, and shown a secret project that doesn’t look anything like you thought it would?”
“That about sums it up,” Mobi said.
“Then you’re really g
oing to like what comes next.”
Alvarez opened a door in the corridor revealing an office. It was a sterile cube, about fifteen by fifteen with a polished steel desk and three chairs. There was a window overlooking the corridor and a multi-line telephone on the desk, but other than that the space was bare. She led him inside, closing the door behind her.
“Look, we don’t have a lot of time here. I was lucky to get you away from Rand’s guys at all so I’m going to get straight to the point. You’re on a level of the lab that as far as the rest of world is concerned, isn’t here. Why it’s here I’ll save for another time, but for now, just know that Rand had you arrested because we traced your hack. He figures you’re more bother than you’re worth. I know better. That’s why I’m bringing you into the fold.”
“So am I under arrest or not?”
“If Rand gets his way, probably. There’s no gray area with him. As far as he’s concerned, you became a security breach the minute you broke protocol and hacked into the system. His job is to plug the hole.”
“Did he remember bringing me into the loop? Did he not expect me to be curious?”
“I get it, Mobi. We’ll deal with Rand later. What you need to know now is that we’ve been engaged in a space race of sorts with the Chinese for a number of years now. That prototype below? That's our interpretation of the Horten — not the plane itself, but the cold fusion reactor it contained. It looks a little different because we had to make modifications to the original plans, but it’s largely irrelevant now. What is relevant is what you already know — that the Chinese version of the Horten reactor complete with a secondary plutonium coil is on a crash course with LA County.”
“What can we do?”
“Listen carefully.” Alvarez eyed the hallway outside her office to ensure they were alone. “Rand is here because he thinks he knows how to deal with the problem. He wants to use one of the DOD’s orbital anti-satellite weapons platforms to blow the Chinese bird out of the sky.”
“Which would be a good plan if it worked,” Mobi said. “Except word is the last time they deployed one of their ASAT platforms, it couldn’t hit the broad side of the moon. And I mean that literally.”
Alvarez lowered her voice. “That’s why you’re here. Look, from what we know, the Chinese haven’t so much built a new reactor as reverse engineered what was left of the Horten found in that rice paddy. As far as we know, they don’t entirely understand what they’ve done. Our sources tell us that they haven’t changed much about the project. They weren’t able to isolate the original communications system from the reactor control, for instance. Instead they just built a new shell, added a few processors, and stuck the whole damn thing on the end of a rocket. Call me crazy, but I’m betting that if we can establish communication with its onboard mainframe, we can keep it in the sky.”
Mobi considered Alvarez’s words. He tended to smile when he was nervous and what Alvarez had said put a grin on his face.
“Why are you laughing?”
“I wouldn’t call it a laugh.”
“Spill it, Mobi.”
“You’re telling me you want me to establish communication with their satellite.”
“Yes.”
“But you’re also telling me that this thing’s communications systems date back to World War II.”
“Like I said, yes.”
Mobi shook his head. “You know the Chinese are cautious. Who knows what kind of encryption protocols are in place? If it’s an analog system, and given its age I don’t see how it isn’t, we’re talking about infinite variations. To break that kind of encryption I need a strand, a thread, something to start parsing their code. What possible resource can you offer me to do that?”
“This is where you listen very carefully.”
“I’m hearing you.”
“Quiann,” Alvarez said.
“What?” Mobi asked incredulous.
“I can offer you Doctor Jie Quiann.”
DOCTOR JIE QUIANN was a legend. He was infamous in the halls of JPL and Mobi knew the man’s career path by rote. A brilliant young mathematician who had been born in China, but claimed refugee status in the USA just after the Second World War, Quiann had soon found his way to California and Caltech where he began his career as a Doctoral Candidate in Applied Physics. From there, Quiann’s career trajectory had been straight up and he soon became one of the world’s preeminent rocket scientists. That, however, was a long time ago. Because before Mobi was even born, Dr. Quiann had defected back to China where he had single handedly founded his mother country’s space program. Nobody knew what spawned his defection; if he had been a plant from his first arrival on US soil, or if he had simply longed for the county which he had left behind, but whatever the case, Quiann went on to become a bona fide hero to the Chinese people.
As such, even if little known amongst average Americans, he was an embarrassment to the US government and the alma mater which trained him. What made the sting of Quiann’s defection particularly acerbic, however, was not the general technical know-how that he had brought back with him years ago. Any number of rocket scientists could have taken those secrets to China. It was the project Quiann was chosen to lead — the Horten Cold Fusion Project — and all that entailed. Many considered cold fusion technology to be key to the long term exploration of space and when Quiann defected in the late-nineteen fifties, a whole lot of research was said to have left with him; potentially dangerous research that many people feared he had yet to share with his colleagues.
From that point, Mobi’s knowledge of Quiann was sketchy at best, which is what made Alvarez’s mention of him seem odder still. It wasn’t like Mobi had a relationship with him, or knew him beyond the lore. In Mobi’s mind Quiann was an infamous footnote, a piece of JPL history that had been all but forgotten to this moment. What could Alvarez possibly expect to achieve by means of illicit communication with a known traitor? But Mobi didn’t have long to think about it, because before he could even fire the question back at Alvarez, Rand and his men had marched into the room.
26
THERE WERE SOME things Michael’s dad didn’t bother telling him much about at all. Like sex. Michael’s dad never talked to Michael about sex. He never told him about the birds and the bees, or what he should expect his first time, or what he should do not to get a girl pregnant. Michael knew that the other kids’ fathers had had this talk with them and he wondered why his dad hadn’t. Finally, Michael didn’t want to wait any longer. So he asked his dad. Not about sex. But about why his father hadn’t told him about sex. When Michael’s dad asked him what he wanted to know, Michael said nothing in particular, he just wanted to know why they hadn’t had the talk.
Michael’s dad was very clear. He said that sex was one of those things that if you had to ask about, you probably weren’t ready to hear. It was a cruel irony. But a lot of life was like that. And understanding the irony was far more important than any father-son chat about the birds and the bees. Because Michael could learn everything he needed to know about sex on his own in about five minutes flat. But life’s ironies took a lifetime to comprehend. And it was only through conversations like this one that his dad would be able to point the way.
MICHAEL WAS EXHAUSTED. They’d made it back to their room at the Whispering Bamboo, but he doubted he’d be able to sleep. He was beyond that. Beyond anything really.
“What are you doing?”
Kate, who had entered the room a step ahead of him, had stripped the mattress off her bed and now held it folded like an accordion between her arms.
“What does it look like?” she said, plopping the mattress down on top of Michael’s. “I’m doubling up the mattress.”
“For who?”
“For who do you think, Michael? Don’t be such a prude. We’ve each got a sleeping bag. Maybe this way we can actually get some sleep.” Kate unrolled her sleeping bag and lay down atop the double mattress staring at the ceiling. “Much better.” She rolled onto her side so
she could face Michael. “What do you think about Ted?”
“What about him?”
“Showing up on the bridge the way he did. Saving our asses. His timing was a little too perfect.”
“I don’t know if I’d be throwing stones, Kate. You’re telling me you had no idea Ted used to be Agency?”
“Agency. Listen to you now. You’re talking the talk.” Michael shot her a look and Kate relented. “I met him for the first time the other night at Chungking. Crust invited him. I swear.”
“Well he seemed to know all about you. He didn’t blink when I told him what you did for a living.”
“Your father must have said something.”
“And that’s it?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Stop deflecting the issue. Your dad revealed a confidence. Case closed. It doesn’t change my concerns about Ted.”
Michael looked to Kate. The bare bulb in the sconce was flickering now as if the connection was loose. “Whatever you’re suggesting, one thing I know is, I’ve known Ted for a long time. He might not have been straight with me until tonight about him and my dad, but I know I can trust him. I always have. Okay?”
Michael got up and turned the flickering bulb off. The only light in the room now bled in through the wooden shutters leaving striations across the bed.
“Okay.”
“Really? That’s it? You’re satisfied? No skulking around to find out what he’s really up to? No spy stuff? Because I like to keep in practice you know. Espionage is a 24-7 game. You got to keep your groove on.”
Lethal Circuit (Michael Chase 1) Page 12
