The Thought Cathedral

by Nathan Williams

  Einstein: HELLO, MS. LEE.

  Lee: HELLO.

  Einstein: HOW ARE YOU?

  Lee: FINE. WHO ARE YOU?

  Einstein: A FRIEND.

  Lee: I DON’T UNDERSTAND.

  Einstein: FRANK SAYS HI AND…

  Lee thought for a moment before she figured out who it was. Lukas Dvorak. Her diminutive friend, short in height but long in spirit, was known for his affection for Albert Einstein. Somehow, Agent Frank knew of their friendship and had apparently asked him to serve as a liaison of sorts within the portal.

  Einstein: TO BE CAREFUL.

  To be careful?

  Lee: I’M FINE, THANKS. I WILL BE CAREFUL. HOW ARE YOU?

  Einstein: CAN’T CHAT. SORRY. BE CAREFUL.

  With that, Einstein continued on by. Lee turned and watched him disappear behind another throng of avatars. Strange.

  Lee continued on into the main corridor along the perimeter of the cathedral. After a few moments, she stopped and stepped off the beaten path next to one of the columns. She tapped the thumb and index finger together on her right hand. This action prompted the appearance of an instant-messaging interface, which hovered in front of her.

  Using a keyboard at rest in front of her on the walking track, Lee typed out a short message:

  Tobyn, I was wandering the portal today and found a little stone chamber off the Grand Cathedral with a strange little door in it. I went through the door and it took me down into a tunnel and into a small underground cavern. Very odd!! I’ve never seen this before. Was wondering if you know how it got there? Lyn Lee

  Tobyn Collier had been a developer on the portal from the very beginning. If anyone knew, it would be him.

  Lee hit the send button and watched the mail slide off into the digital netherworld. She tapped on the screen, causing it to disappear from view. Lee sighed, looked around again for Confucius and, having not seen him in her vicinity, resumed her trek to the Polymaths.

  Beijing, China

  Tuesday, January 27, 8:23 p.m. China Standard Time

  Joe Leonard took one last look behind him—one last look through his frozen breath—at the series of black, gray, and jade-green buildings that dotted the commercial area of Haidian District in northwest Beijing. As he was required to do anytime he visited Beijing Headquarters, he’d spent the past four hours on a counter-surveillance run. This consisted of taking a long route through Beijing using multiple means of transportation and taking a path that was both unpredictable and that placed him in situations that lent themselves to easier observation of his foes. The purpose was to identify any possible counter-surveillance operatives working for the Beijing government, and lose them, prior to approaching and entering the headquarters building.

  Certain he was no longer being followed, Leonard approached a plain four-story office building with a sign at the front that said Haidian Industrial Designs. It was as nondescript a building as you could find anywhere in Beijing, and that was the point. The casual observer would never see the security cameras situated strategically on the roof and around the perimeter of the building; would never know that the bleak gray windows were bulletproof.

  Leonard pulled the door open and stepped into an interior reflecting a normal office environment, except for the presence of two plain-clothes security officers and a security detection apparatus. Leonard placed his backpack on a short conveyer belt as one of the officers frisked him. Once through security, the second officer returned his backpack, and he continued on to the rear of the building.

  A middle-aged woman dressed in a white blouse, gray suit coat, and gray skirt stood behind a semi-circular greeting kiosk constructed of turquois-green, white, tan, and black marble. She was leaning down, placing a file into a drawer. The nameplate on the kiosk said: AGNES OTTINGER.

  “Hello, Agnes,” Leonard greeted as he passed hurriedly by.

  Leonard was well past the kiosk when he heard Agnes’s greeting. He turned back around and waved at her before continuing to the rear of the building where he stepped into an elevator, pressing the 2 on the numbered panel.

  On the second floor, Leonard found his way through a maze of cubicles until he found the one that had a series of photographs tacked along two of the walls. The photos had been snapped by Jeff Abrams on his many travels throughout China. Most of the photos currently on the wall had been taken of people living life within the hutongs. A month earlier, it had been a series of shots he’d taken during an excursion into the mountains to the north of Beijing on the Great Wall. Joining a stack of books and maps, a book titled A History of Beijing, a desktop computer and monitor, and a myriad of CIA-related file folders and papers on Abrams’s desk, was a cup of coffee. The coffee was still hot. Abrams couldn’t have left very long ago.

  Leonard sighed. He’d have to catch up with Abrams later. He left the cubicle farm, dashing along the perimeter hallway to the office in the northeast corner of the building. Along the way, he caught bits and pieces of American and international news being broadcast on flat-screen TVs that had been placed at different positions around the floor. Hirsch, who’d already arrived, was setting up a large screen monitor. Leonard heard a clicking sound as Hirsch inserted a plug into a jack in his laptop.

  “Do you have the drive?” Hirsch asked.

  Leonard fished the specialized drive from a side pocket in his pack. Hirsch took it in his thick hands and inserted the USB end into the laptop.

  “Sounds like everything’s going well with Min?” Hirsch asked.

  Leonard slid his coat off and placed it on a coat hook in the corner of the room.

  “I think so, yes,” Leonard said as he took a seat at the office table. “As you recall, she was very apprehensive about getting through the security apparatus, but she made it through with no problems. She seems comfortable with everything.”

  “Excellent,” Hirsch said.

  Hirsch rolled up the sleeves on his pin-striped button-down, pressed his glasses up on his nose with his thumb, and took a sip of his coffee.

  “Now, let’s see what we’ve got here.”

  The photos in the drive were arranged chronologically in the order in which Min had taken them. Hirsch clicked on the first one and used the mouse to expand the image size. The document was a mix of writing and numbers entered into cells formed from horizontal and vertical lines. It appeared to Leonard that it was a chart of some kind. Hirsch murmured, “Japanese…”

  “That’s got to be Japanese,” Leonard said, pointing to a design of some sort in the top left-hand corner.

  “It’s the insignia for the Japanese navy,” Hirsch said. “It looks like the document is charting the position of a Japanese submarine. I can only understand bits and pieces of Japanese, but I’m pretty sure these characters here”—Hirsch pointed to a set of characters in the top left-hand corner— “are referring to a submarine called the Isoshio. It’s an attack sub.”

  Hirsch examined the document for a few more moments, struggling to understand some of the writing. “This is all data for one day. October 26th of last year.” Hirsch flipped to the next photo, which had the same matrix full of data as the first one did. “This is the same form and same data type, except it’s for a different submarine.”

  Hirsch flipped through the first few documents, which were all identical to the first one—each containing the geographical movements of Japanese submarines. Eventually, the documents changed to a series of photos of Japanese subs, including a section of detailed specifications. This was followed by another set of documents, which were still of Japanese origin, but appeared to originate from the offices of the Japanese House of Representatives. These seemed to be semi-random in their purpose: a set of minutes taken from an internal meeting, a biographical sketch of a young politician in a small village in northern Japan, a series of detailed official documents on imports and exports, and another series of agricultural production reports.

  Due to their homogeneity, Hirsch clicked through these last documents quickly
until he stumbled onto a different series altogether. Leonard recognized the new documents immediately because they all had a miniature portrait of Galileo Galilei stamped at the bottom left corner. It was the familiar logo for his own company, Brooklyn Capital Management, of which Ricardo’s Logistics was a subsidiary. Also contained in the documents, stamped on the bottom right corner, were the alpha-numerical addresses where the documents were stored within Brooklyn Capital’s intranet.

  Leonard swallowed thickly. “Looks like Min was telling the truth about Brooklyn Capital.”

  “Yes, it does,” Hirsch said.

  They flipped through all of the remaining documents, of which there was a total of a hundred and thirty-eight. These documents were a miscellaneous mix coming from a handful of other countries, mostly in East Asia. The pressing concern for Hirsch, however, was the Brooklyn documents, followed closely by those coming from Japan.

  “I’ve got to get these transmitted to Langley,” Hirsch said. Hirsch turned to Leonard. “Very nice job with this, Joe. This may turn out to be one of the best assets we’ve ever had in China.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Leonard briefly pondered what this might mean for the handling of Jiang, Min, and her mother. He had his own opinions, however, those decisions were made above his pay grade. Time will tell.

  New York City

  Tuesday, January 27, 6:15 a.m. EST

  Zhixin Ziu’s eyes shot open at the sound of the small alarm he kept below the cot. He rolled his body a bit, reached down with his long arm, and punched the off switch. He slipped easily off the cot, catching himself with his right arm to keep himself from crashing onto the floor. The alarm clock read 6:15 a.m. He sauntered to the small window facing to the east, peering through. It was dark and relatively still at this early hour.

  Wearing a pair of navy polyester jogging pants and a white tank top, he pounded out several dozen pushups and five hundred sit-ups before making his way into the kitchen to make his breakfast, his face glistening with a thin sheath of sweat.

  He threw four slices of wheat bread into a toaster, scrambled four eggs, fried some sausages, and poured some orange juice into a small glass. When he’d finished his breakfast, he showered and began dressing for the work day. After he’d slipped on a pair of flawlessly ironed black flat-front dress pants, black dress socks, and a clean white tank top, he slid into the small restroom, where he shaved and trimmed his facial hair.

  He then slid on a white dress shirt and maneuvered to the clothes rack, where he kept a separate hanger lined with ties. All of the ties were made in his preferred style: a long string of black, braided leather wrapped neatly around a specially designed metal clasp, which he used to tighten the leather piece around his neck. When it was fastened, he discovered that it looked exactly like one of the bolo ties worn in the southwestern U.S. The design of his clasp, however, allowed him to quickly and efficiently remove the leather string and replace it again.

  He secured one of the ties around his neck, threw on his black dress coat, and left the apartment. It was going to be a long day.

  New York City

  Tuesday, January 27, 7:42 a.m. EST

  Lee opened the door to the little cafe once again, and maneuvered her way around several tables to the back where Agent Jillian Frank sat waiting for her. Frank smiled and motioned, welcoming her to the table.

  “Hello, Lyn.”

  “Hello.”

  Frank rose from the table to greet her. She tugged a bit at a green silk aspen scarf she was wearing around her neck. She was wearing a white button-down under a green sweater that matched the shade of green in her scarf, black dress pants, and black dress shoes. For her part, Lee was wearing a sweater with white, beige, and brown elements to the design, dark brown dress pants, and brown dress shoes.

  “How’s everything going?” Frank inquired.

  “I had a very eerie exchange with Albert Einstein,” Lee said.

  “You had a what?” Frank said.

  “Albert Einstein. In the portal.”

  Frank rolled her eyes, her face morphing into an expression of realization.

  “Oh, yes! I’ve been in touch with someone I believe is a friend of yours. Lukas Dvorak.”

  “How’d you know he’s a friend of mine?”

  “Well, I was one of the agents that had been investigating Dvorak during his incident with the theft of Brooklyn Capital. We learned about your friendship during our investigation at the time.”

  “I see.”

  “I asked him if he’d be willing to be a liaison in the portal if that should become necessary and he agreed to it. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, it’s good. Thank you.”

  “He seemed more than eager to ‘harness his inner Einstein,’ as he phrased it.”

  Lee smiled. “That doesn’t surprise me. He’s a big fan of Einstein’s.”

  “How are things going between you and Xiang?”

  “Okay, I guess. I’m a little nervous. He invited me somewhere on Friday, but I’m not sure where yet.”

  “How do you mean?” Frank asked.

  “He wants to surprise me.”

  “Okay.” Frank took a sip of her water.

  “Agent Frank, do you know anything about Xiang. I mean…do you think it’s safe to be with him?”

  Frank nodded. “Nothing’s changed in that regard. We don’t have any information to suggest Xiang is dangerous.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re doing very well,” Frank said. “We’re aggressively pursuing all leads available on this case. But, to be honest, we don’t have much. If Xiang is involved or knows anything, you could be playing a critical role for us, Lyn.”

  Lee nodded. “I understand.”

  “We don’t yet have any evidence pointing to him personally. But, you never know what he may know. That’s why we have you there. Keep your eyes and ears open at all times when you’re with him. Again, we want to know who he’s communicating with both inside and outside of Brooklyn Capital.”

  “Yes, of course.” Lee paused. “I followed Xiang through the portal yesterday. Or, at least, I think it was him. I’m pretty sure it was his avatar.” Lee could see she had Frank’s full attention. “He went down into an unusual place in the portal. Someplace I didn’t know existed. And he met someone down there.”

  “Who was it he met?”

  “I’m not sure. I can’t figure out who’s behind the avatar.” Frank frowned as Lee continued. “I ran a search of the avatars in the portal, but there’s no employee name listed for the avatar I saw Xiang meet up with.”

  “Is there a way to ID this avatar?” Frank asked. “We’ve been given access to the portal and to Brooklyn’s technical specialists. I can have someone perform a more detailed search.”

  “It was an avatar of Confucius, the Chinese philosopher. When I tried to search the database, the name attached to the avatar came back as anonymous.”

  Lee gave her a more detailed description of the avatar.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Frank said.

  Chapter 7

  New York City

  Tuesday, January 27, 5:57 p.m. EST

  Lyn Lee zipped her black wool coat higher and pulled the teal-green winter scarf around her neck a little tighter as she stood on the corner of 50th and Madison in the Midtown section of Manhattan. Across the intersection was the venerable Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and, in the immediate neighborhood, a mix of corporate offices and upscale apartment buildings. Small snowflakes floated down around her and the slight wind bristling through the buildings had seeped into her coat and onto her exposed skin. She shivered as she closed off the crease and warmth from her body enveloped her again.

  She’d been in the portal the day prior when Xiang had texted the secret location of the meet-up. The text had read simply 50TH & MADISON 6 PM. She’d arrived at about ten minutes prior to the meet-up time and had been making short trips into the lobby of an adjacent apartment complex to warm up
.

  At 6 p.m. sharp, she thought she heard someone shouting her name and spun around, searching. She spotted Xiang, who’d seemingly materialized out of thin air. He was standing on the opposite side of 50th Street next to an apartment building.

  “Lyn!” Xiang shouted, waving at her to cross over to the north side of 50th. She hustled across as soon as the light turned. Lee met Xiang after she crossed over underneath a leafless tree.

  “Hello, Lyn.”

  Xiang extended his right hand. She took it and accepted a mini-hug from him, his left arm wrapped around her.

  “Hey.”

  Xiang extended his left arm toward the apartment building, palm facing upwards.

  “Please, follow me. I have someone I want you to meet.”

  The exterior of the apartment was constructed of beige stone and decorated with ornate stone designs along the corners and windows of the building. She followed him through the front entrance, into a small lobby, and into an elevator. Xiang pressed the button for the sixth floor.

  Lee followed Xiang out of the elevator and through a hallway running along the perimeter of the floor. After a few feet, he stopped at a door marked with the number sixty-two, which had a central location as compared to the other apartments on the floor. Xiang rapped on the door, and the two of them stood, waiting.

  Xiang turned toward Lee and bowed curtly. “Thanks for coming.”

  Lee smiled broadly. “Sure. Thanks for inviting me.”

  The door swung open slowly, gradually revealing a thin older man dressed in black dress slacks, black socks, block moccasins, and a white dress shirt. The man had gray hair, cut short and parted along the side. He had thin lips that slipped easily into a wide smile, a wide nose, and bushy eyebrows that danced under twinkling dark eyes.