Her voice turned soft, almost seductive. “But, you see, you already are involved.”
I scowled. Then I got it. “The flash drive.”
She nodded again.
“But if it is ever decrypted, it will reveal Hollander’s collusion with Gregory and Gao. Nothing about the Uyghurs’ predicament. Or what Delcroft knew and when they knew it.”
“It will be enough. We will show the media the drone blast sites. And the pipeline construction. China will be exposed for its duplicity and repression.”
I didn’t want to tell her she was being naïve. That even if she did get to the media, they probably wouldn’t do anything about it. I changed the subject.
“Tell me something, Grace. Who was Gregory planning to give the flash drive to? When we talked he said he had an errand to run downtown. I assume it had to do with the drive.”
Grace’s forehead creased in a frown. “I’m not sure. It could have been his Uyghur contact at the consulate downtown. Or it could have been his Chinese military contact, who’s at the consulate as well.” She smiled. “He often wondered if they knew he was playing them against each other. ‘If they only knew,’ he would say. And then he would laugh.”
“Are you sure they didn’t know about each other? And that Gregory was a double?”
She looked at me, concern flooding across her face. “Why?”
“Nothing.” I didn’t want to alarm her that she might be the only other person, aside from Parks himself, who knew the truth about what he was up to.
Chapter Forty-nine
Wednesday
I climbed out of Grace’s car and walked around the back, my boots making a quiet swoosh on the ground. After a moment I went back to her side.
Grace rolled down her window and shot me a cool gaze. “You are not going to help me.”
“It’s not that. Someone has hacked into my computer and tapped my phone. I’m being followed. I’m pretty sure it’s Delcroft, but if it isn’t, and I tried to contact the media on your behalf, I’m sure I would be stopped.”
“My phone and computers, and Gregory’s, too, were hacked,” she said. “But I cannot allow that to stop me.”
“That’s not all, Grace. Aside from the flash drive, you don’t have concrete proof. You can’t expect the media or government to act on what is essentially little more than conjecture. It doesn’t happen that way.” I didn’t add that even I wasn’t sure I bought the whole story. I’d just met the woman. Why should I trust her? Especially with so many double-dealing people in the mix?
If she really was Gregory’s fiancée, her pro-Uyghur, anti-China politics would work against her. I’d given up on a black-and-white world long ago and had learned to live in the gray. But Grace was still young. She still thought she could change the world.
I glanced back at the temple. Our tail would be emerging soon. “We need to go.”
“Go online. Look up the Uyghurs. You’ll see.”
“I don’t disbelieve you. I just don’t know what I can do.”
She shook her head, as if she realized she’d wasted precious time.
“Look…,” I tried to mollify her. “Let’s talk again in a few days. How can I get in touch with you?”
She shook her head again. “You can’t. I will contact you.”
“Okay. By the way, how did you and Gregory get out of China?”
“Gregory came five years ago. He was, of course, an only child, and his parents were killed in a train derailment. That’s when he started to work for the government. He learned English, and they sent him here. I was already here. My parents saw there was no future for me in the basin. They helped me escape to Pakistan ten years ago and I eventually made it here.”
“Your parents are still back in China?”
She nodded.
I thought back to my former boyfriend, David Linden. His mother had escaped Nazi Germany and met her husband, Kurt, here. Kurt had been the sole survivor of his family.
“There’s something else you should know.” She keyed the engine. It started up right away. Toyotas. “Gregory was afraid we would run out of time. China hacks into everything. All over the world. That’s one of the reasons I came to see you. I do not know how much more time I have.”
She closed the driver’s side window, pulled away from the curb, and drove east to Sheridan Road.
I trudged to my Camry, mulling over her warning. If the Chinese knew what Grace knew, and were able to connect Gregory to me…
I pulled my jacket more closely around me.
Chapter Fifty
Wednesday
Instead of heading home, I drove to the library. Melissa, the head librarian, was behind the desk stacking returned books on a rolling cart. “We’re seeing a lot of you these days.”
“Libraries are my favorite places,” I said, trying to appear cheerful.
She arched an eyebrow. “Computer on the fritz again?”
“Busted.” I gave her a rueful smile.
I went online and searched for everything I could find about the Uyghurs, their history, and the rise of radical Islam in that part of the world. I pulled up more than I expected, including several short videos. One showed a group of police officers, and what looked like a Chinese SWAT team, swarming a car at a checkpoint. Another showed a car erupting into flames somewhere in Beijing. A third showed a group of demonstrators fleeing from police in riot gear. Another video revealed close-ups of women with bruises on their arms and faces, as well as shots of Uyghurs in various poses and settings, most of them with that curious mix of Asian and Caucasian features.
Then I Googled “drone strikes on Uyghurs.” The first article to come up, dated 2012, reported a drone strike that killed a Uyghur jihadi terrorist in eastern Turkistan, part of Uyghur territory. Except the strike came from a US drone, not a Chinese one. The US justified the attack by saying the jihadi was a known member of al-Qaeda. Why was I not surprised? The drones had probably been made by Delcroft.
Another article described a stealth drone manufactured by the Chinese that could be used aggressively. The Chinese claimed they were being used solely for surveillance on terrorists.
Sure.
There were also sporadic reports of explosions that were never explained, as well as people dying or disappearing in the desert that makes up most of the Tarim Basin.
A fifth video, this one on YouTube, claimed to be a drone attack in the Uyghur desert. The silent explosion, seen from above, sent clouds of dust and rocks flying and caused an eruption of flames that ate whatever had been there before. It looked like one of those scenes from Homeland when Carrie Mathison ordered drone strikes for the CIA. Finally, a CNN video news report claimed that the market for armed drones, led by Israel and the US, had mushroomed over the past few years and was worth more than twenty billion dollars.
So far everything Grace had told me was checking out.
Chapter Fifty-one
Thursday
Zach Dolan called my cell early the next morning. He sounded excited and asked me to meet him at Starbucks so we could go for a drive. When he pulled into the parking lot, I hopped in. Cadaverous black circles underlined his eyes, and he looked like he hadn’t slept all night. Despite that, he was beaming.
“Well?” I asked as he pushed into traffic.
He unzipped his down vest, pulled out an eight-by-ten brown envelope, and slid it toward me. “I cracked it.”
“The encryption? Really?”
He nodded. “One of the toughest jobs I’ve ever done. But I finally got it.”
“How?”
“Let me try to break it down for you. Basically, there were several different types of encryption used. On the US end they were using a single-pass method. I finally found the decryption key on the Darknet. But the Chinese encryption was tough. I was afraid it was double-encrypted, which would have made it impossible to decode, but I connected with a Chinese hacker, and he got me the key.”
“I don’t understand.” Now for th
e final test of whether Grace Qasimi was telling the truth “So?”
“I printed out everything.” He placed his hand on the envelope. “I don’t need to tell you this is highly confidential shit. If anyone finds out you have it, we’re both screwed.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t take it,” I said. Then I stopped. What the hell was I thinking? This was the reason I was involved in the mess in the first place.
“Just so you know, I didn’t make a copy of anything. I put the second drive you gave me after the explosion in with the printouts. I don’t want to hear about this ever again.” He shot me a penetrating look. “Are we clear?”
“Crystal.”
He pushed the envelope toward me. I picked it up. It was thick.
I was about to open the clasp when he raised his hand.
“Don’t open it here.”
I nodded and slipped the package into my lap. “How much do I owe you?”
“We said three hundred, right?”
“But that was before they blew up your office.”
He looked over. “I should have known when that went down that I shouldn’t go any further.”
“But you couldn’t help yourself, could you?”
He sighed. “That’s about the size of it.”
“Should I write you a check?”
“Not on your life. This is a cash-only deal.”
“You be careful, Zach.”
“You too, Ellie.”
• • •
After Zach dropped me off, I rushed home, as if the envelope was on fire and I had to put it out. Luke’s pickup wasn’t in the garage; nor was it parked at the curb. Still I called out once I was inside.
“Luke? You home?”
No answer.
It was better that way. I carried the envelope gingerly up to my office, closed the door, and pulled down the shades. I opened the clasp and pulled out what was inside. There must have been a sheaf of more than fifty papers.
The first dozen or so sheets were copies of three-way emails between Hollander, Gao, and Parks. I started reading. It felt like a film was unfolding in front of me. At the beginning there were emails of introduction in which everyone said how honored they were to meet the others. That was followed by lots of praise and compliments about each person’s respective position within his or her organization. And how kind Gregory Parks was to put them together.
Kindness, my foot. Parks was being paid for the connection, probably by both sides. Chances were he was making a killing. I caught myself and grimaced at my choice of words.
Then the conversation moved into more substantive areas. Parks brought up the system, although he didn’t mention the words “anti-drone” or “DADES.” He explained that Hollander had been working on little else during the past two years. Gao responded with effusive praise. Parks followed up by saying that Hollander was the only person in the entire world who knew the system inside out, and that her knowledge might be helpful to General Gao, who emphatically agreed. Parks took the conversation further by proposing that the two meet; he understood they might have mutually beneficial needs.
When I read the next batch of emails, I gasped. They had met! Six months earlier, all three had flown to the Bahamas for a long weekend. That must have been where the deal was struck, because there was nothing in the emails prior to the trip or afterward that mentioned dollars or contracts or exactly who was getting what.
In fact, the nature of the emails changed significantly after that. The three-way emails between Hollander, Parks, and Gao ended; instead, everything went through Parks. It made sense—both Hollander and Gao had to protect themselves as much as possible. I wondered if Hollander had deleted the earlier emails from her computer—I was sure she had. General Gao undoubtedly had as well.
Fortunately for me, though, my flash drive came from Parks, which contained all the emails that had been exchanged between the three since the beginning. I was able to read the ones from Hollander to Parks, but the ones from Parks to Gao were in Chinese, and I had no idea what they said. Maybe Grace would translate them. Then I reconsidered. I was reading about treason. The fewer people involved, the better.
The final batch of emails from Hollander to Parks were businesslike. Most had to do with delivery timetables, components, and specs. One email from Hollander acknowledged receipt of a deposit. I suspected that might be the most incriminating email. There were also diagrams and charts and schematics attached to some of the correspondence. Again, I had no idea what I was looking at, and probably wouldn’t, even if I had a degree in engineering. There were also emails listing reputable suppliers and discussions about who could formulate the parts, especially the electronics, although Hollander told Parks she expected Gao would have his own.
Which would be much cheaper, I thought. The Chinese were known to steal American technology, copy it, and sell it for half the price.
I skimmed the emails between Parks and Gao. While I couldn’t understand them, I did notice that Parks had forwarded the attachments from Hollander. I eyed a few of them; they appeared to be the same documents she’d sent to Parks from her end.
Everything from Hollander’s side was sent from her personal email, [email protected]. And nothing from Gao’s email address indicated he worked for the Chinese government. Still, if Hollander sent them from work, even from her personal account, there was probably a record of them on the Delcroft computer system, and I was sure Stokes was trying to decrypt them too. But Stokes didn’t have what I had, which was the correspondence from Parks to Gao. Which made what I had even more valuable. In fact, now that Parks was dead, I might be the only person who had the full story.
Now I knew why Hollander was desperate to get Parks’ flash drive. Stokes, too, even though there didn’t seem to be any love lost between the two of them. Hollander needed to destroy the drive, and Stokes—well, I wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with the emails, but he couldn’t do anything until he had them in his possession. The enormity of what I held in my hands swept over me, and I let out a shaky breath. There might as well have been a huge target on my back. I went into my bathroom, swallowed a Xanax, and tried to figure out what to do.
Chapter Fifty-two
Thursday
I checked the time; it was nearly noon. Luke, wherever he was, would be back soon. Before he could persuade me otherwise, I slid the papers back into the envelope, jumped into my car, and raced over to the place we used to call Kinko’s. I printed out a copy of everything, made sure the pages were collated, and drove over to my bank, which was just up the street. I ran in, waited impatiently as they led me to my safe-deposit box, and stashed the originals.
Luke was pawing through leftovers in the fridge when I got home.
I kissed him. “Where have you been?” I asked.
“I’ve been talking to Grizzly. I need to discuss something with you.”
“I have something to discuss with you, too.”
He bent his head sideways and closed the refrigerator door. “Okay. You go first.”
“Sit.” He did. “Dolan cracked the encryption on the drive.”
He leaned forward and clasped his hands together. “And?”
“Take a look.” I fished out the copies from my bag. “Take your time.”
As he started reading, I went to the refrigerator and pulled out a Diet Snapple. I came back to the table and waited. He didn’t say anything, and his face had that slight frown that comes from intense concentration. Occasionally his eyebrows arched, and once, he looked up at me in amazement. Finally he got to the last batch, which were in Chinese.
“This is incredible.”
I nodded. “But that’s only part of it.”
“What are you saying, Ellie?”
“Care to take a short drive?”
• • •
“Thanks for coming back to the party,” Melissa said when we walked into the library.
“We just can’t stay away,” I shot back. “For the Perle Mesta of the Dewey Dec
imal System, you throw a hell of a bash.”
“How gratifying,” she said. “Since she’s been dead for forty years.” She motioned us toward the computers.
We signed in and sat at one of the terminals. I went online to Google the articles and videos I’d seen yesterday. The video of the car exploding into flames in Beijing was there, but it was much shorter. It showed a clear jump cut in the progression of the video. First the car was rolling along; then it was already on fire. Someone had edited it! I tried to recall what had been there when I saw it yesterday. I think it was a sign that identified Beijing as the location.
I frowned. “Something’s wrong.”
“What?” Luke asked
“This video has been edited since I saw it yesterday. Yesterday, I could tell the exploding car was in Beijing. Today it doesn’t identify where the explosion is. See the jump cut?” I replayed the video so Luke could see it.
Luke stroked his beard. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” Then I tried to pull up the SWAT team closing in on the checkpoint someplace in China. It was gone altogether. In its place was one of those benign statements that said, “We’re sorry, but this video has been removed by the copyright owners.”
“What is going on?” I asked.
“You’re the video expert.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, then gestured to him. “Come with me.”
Luke got up and followed me out the front door. We sat on a waist-high wall that surrounded the parking lot. I lowered my voice.
“There’s something else you need to know.”
I filled him in on my meeting with Grace Qasimi and what she’d told me about Parks and the Uyghurs. How Parks had been a double agent.
Luke’s eyes narrowed. “Uyghurs…aren’t they the Muslims in China?”
“Exactly. Remember the video of the car bursting into flames? The Chinese government alleges the Uyghurs are terrorists. That burning car was supposed to be a terrorist act.”
“But?”
“Grace says the Uyghurs aren’t terrorists. That they’re victims of persecution.”
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