by Fritz Galt
But could he appeal to a majority of voters in a nation as diverse as America? He observed how his blue eyes twinkled like a sage and shone like a youth. They were eyes that could flirt with college coeds, wink at NASCAR dads, put a patriotic throb in the hearts of the men and women in uniform, bring hope to the souls of the downtrodden, and assure the well-heeled of continued good times.
He tried out various expressions. He sought to be everyman, and he was. In rebuilding his face, the team of surgeons had made him more than the old reverend. They had endowed him with more youth, health, and good looks. He was a masterpiece of reconstructive and cosmetic surgery.
His mind shot ahead to the upcoming evening. How would he look in leisure slacks and a polo shirt? How would he look sipping cocktails with Governor Walsh on the terrace of the San Diego Yacht Club? After a drink laced with LSD and a brief two-man cruise around the harbor, complete with an unfortunate and painful blow to the head by the ship’s boom, the governor would be ready to comply with anything Dr. Yu planted in his brain. He could envision it all.
But now it was time to seduce the nation.
He squared his shoulders, jutted out his jaw, slicked a comb through his hair, and slapped his cheeks to produce more color. He was ready for his close-up.
Igor Sullivan finished a six-mile run before dawn, read the Saturday newspaper, and arrived at work before eight o’clock. From that point on, things went downhill.
An email from the front office awaited him when he arrived. The FBI had turned Gary Norton’s request down. They were not interested in assigning agents to exorcise a ghost, and they especially didn’t want to offend China after what had just happened. He knew what the FBI was worried about. He had read about Colorado’s trade embargo and the stir it had created in Beijing.
So he headed for the coffee machine. He disapproved of coffee, but used the machine to make tea and catch up on the latest office gossip. It was a typical weekend morning. The place was dead, except for one man stirring his coffee. It was Carl Miller from the agency’s medical forensics lab.
He handed Sullivan an office mailer. “I worked on this all night.”
“No match, I hope.” There was still a small chance that Mr. Leng wasn’t Liang Jiaxi. The world would be a better place without Liang around. The man who had entered the country moments after Dr. Yu could have been an innocent traveler.
“It’s the same guy,” Carl said. “Pretty good attempt at disguising his features, though.”
“More likely the result of patching him up after a near-death experience.”
Carl shook his head. “He may have had his skull cracked open, but this was a deliberate attempt to change his appearance.”
It was the top of the hour, and the morning news was just coming on over a nearby television. Instinctively, both men paused to watch. The Reverend Terry Smith made waves revealing that he believed foreign powers were attempting to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into America through her ports. Never before had a major presidential candidate resorted to fear tactics so early in a race.
“What do you make of that guy?” Carl asked.
“Sends shivers up and down my spine.”
“Same here. I hope Customs begins inspecting each and every container that enters this country.”
Sullivan was surprised. “You believe that guy?”
“You bet. I’ve been watching him for years. If he told me aliens were about to land, I’d believe him.”
“Based on what?”
“Faith, my friend.” Carl slapped him on the back and turned to leave.
Sullivan glanced around the room. Other officers, technicians and staff were dragging themselves in to resume their seven-day-a-week role in keeping the president informed of foreign threats. Unfortunately, the agency’s name, the CIA, conveyed the misimpression that they were more intelligent than other bureaucrats. If fact, the word “intelligence” merely referred to raw or analyzed information. Wearing a badge that said Central Intelligence Agency didn’t make one smarter, nor did it help the CIA recruit brighter minds. More often it preferred shapelier bodies.
If the half-baked ideas of a religious zealot such as Terry Smith carried so much weight with a guarded forensic scientist like Carl Miller, then how much more influence would a person like Smith have over a far less critical American public?
He walked back to his office and opened Carl’s report. He laid the two photographs, one of Liang Jiaxi and the other of Leng Jiahao, side by side. They were different men, except for the eyes. The eyes bore the same unique charisma and ruthlessness that still made him shudder.
Carl’s report compared the subjects feature by feature. It pointed out how the bone structure was identical in the cheekbones and chin. The eyes were an identical size in proportion to the width of the head. Both sets of ears sat in the same relative position to the temples.
The differences were more superficial. The newer photograph, that of Leng, showed the ears slightly smaller, possibly the result of an operation. The differences in the noses were equally downplayed. Liang had a broad, low-bridged nose, whereas Leng’s was longer and more pronounced. Since reshaping the nose merely required the manipulation of cartilage, the disparity did not indicate different subjects.
Various more gruesome details described how the leaner appearance might have been achieved, from breaking or replacing bones to scalpel cuts on various pockets of skin to remove fat.
The summary read: “Although professional surgery may have altered the surface features of the subject’s face, nothing could change the basic dimensions and bone structure of the eye sockets, forehead, cheekbones and jaw. There is a 99% probability that both subjects are the same individual, and that the photograph of Leng was taken after major plastic and, likely, reconstructive surgery.”
Sullivan grimaced and closed the folder. That sealed it. Liang Jiaxi was back in circulation, and he was in the country.
He turned to the phone to reach his immediate boss, William Eagleman, head of the East Asia area desk. “Bill, I got the report on Liang back from forensics. They confirm that the guy who entered the country yesterday morning was Liang.”
“And you want to reopen the case on him?”
“That’s right. Need I remind you of his previous record? If he were not believed dead, he would be the subject of arrest warrants not only here, but in China as well.”
“Okay. I’ll go halfway on this,” Bill said. “I’ll let you reopen the file on Liang. But I want you to confine your role to that of coordination between Station Beijing and the FBI domestically. I don’t want any Agency assets deployed here on American soil.”
Sullivan rolled his eyes. “The FBI has already told Gary that they aren’t interested in tracking down and jailing the grandson of the President of China. So what do you suggest?”
“I’ll bring your discovery up with the brass,” Bill said. “Maybe they can use it as a diplomatic wedge.”
“More like a poke in the eye to the Chinese right now.”
“Why? What’s wrong with now?”
Hadn’t Bill read about Colorado rejecting a shipment of Chinese goods? The FBI wouldn’t want to embarrass the Chinese at that critical moment by resurrecting their hero and taking him into custody. “Don’t you read the papers? We’re shipping planeloads of products back to China because we suspect they’re full of weapons of mass destruction.”
“I read it,” Bill said, a bit too defensively. “But that’s one isolated incident.”
“This story is snowballing,” Sullivan said. He reflected on that morning’s television images, those of Terry Smith applauding the closure of an American facility due to suspected WMDs. “Today Reverend Smith is calling for a countrywide boycott on imports. By Monday, the rest of Washington will be jumping on the bandwagon. Our politicians are sure to more than offend Chinese sensibilities. They’ll put a dent in their pocketbooks.”
“Well, that’s a problem for the State Department or Commerce or Homela
nd Security, whatever. Let’s just stick with what we do best.”
“Which is?”
“Gathering intelligence.”
Sullivan hung up the phone. What they did best was watch bad things happen, send out pleas to other government agencies, and sit on their hands and watch the inevitable unfold.
But at least he had permission to reopen the case on Liang. He was turning to his computer to find Liang’s file when something in another computer window caught his eye. Since he had lost track of Leng after his flight to Denver, he had put out tracers on Leng’s electronic trail. He had sent out a sniffer program on a broad search for anyone surnamed Leng anywhere in the country. One of the leads was flashing in red.
There were many Lengs in the country paying their bills, checking into hotels, charging their credit cards. But most were in the New York-New Jersey corridor or the San Francisco-Los Angeles region. So he had asked the program to highlight those transactions that took place in Colorado.
A Mr. Leng Jiahao had just rented a Ford Escort in Breckenridge. He scanned over the other Lengs that appeared on the screen. None of them had the same given name of Jiahao. He was in luck.
He reached for his telephone and dialed the cloaking number used by the agency to obscure the source of calls from Langley. Then he dialed May’s cell phone.
She picked it up on the first ring. Her lovely, clipped Chinese accent was tinged with fright and expectation. “Who is this?”
“This is Sullivan.”
“Yes, Brad’s father?”
He had to smile at her formality. “I believe I know where to find Liang. He may be in Breckenridge, Colorado. That’s not far from Denver. He just rented a white Escort.”
“He has a white prostitute?”
“No…”
“Is she black?”
“Did I say that?”
“You said he rented an escort.”
Sullivan thumped his forehead. How did his son ever communicate with this girl? “No, an Escort is a car model.”
“Is she beautiful?”
“Not a model. A car. Liang rented an automobile.” He pulled up details of the car contract on the screen. “He’s renting the car for a month, no second driver listed, no insurance. License plate is FHJ-8796. He gets unlimited mileage and intends to return the car to Denver.”
“He’s renting a car?”
Sullivan would have to slow down and stick with the basics. “Yes, he rented a car in Breckenridge.”
“Then that is where I am going,” May said decisively.
“That’s a good idea.” Let her take the initiative. After all, he didn’t have authority to mount a domestic operation. “Good luck, and keep in touch with me.”
“I’ll touch you later,” she said, and hung up.
The phone fell off his shoulder.
He had one more critical task to perform. He opened another program on the computer and retrieved the file named “Liang Jiaxi.” He reached for the trackball, selected the text at the bottom of the screen that read, “Individual Deceased. Case Closed,” and replaced it with “Alias: Leng Jiahao.”
Liang’s case was officially reopened.
Chapter 12
May glanced out her hotel window at the white peaks of the airport roof. She closed her cell phone and paused to collect her thoughts.
The previous afternoon when she had arrived at Denver’s high-tech airport, she had felt no vibes that her father had just been there. The place was unlike him in every respect, for he was a man of the ancient past, a man of the natural world and scientific investigation who knew the earliest years of mankind better than he knew his own. The futuristic airport was no place for a man of such sensibilities.
Nor could she visualize young Liang at the airport. He would have been one of hundreds of passengers crammed into the cabin of a slow-moving commercial jet. Instead, Liang was a flying ace, one of the best in the People’s Air Force. He could take the stick of just about any rotary or fixed wing aircraft and make it dance in the sky. He never needed commercial airports. He moved with ease around the world in private and military jets. No, it was odd to think that Liang had been there that day.
She and Jade had spent the night at one of the airport’s express hotels. It provided temporary lodging for locals with early morning flights or transiting passengers with long layovers. Its spare quality appealed to her. There was no tipping of bellhops and concierges and other vestiges of a class-conscious society as in big American hotels. There were no fake gourmet restaurants, prefabricated fountains, or frivolous spiral staircases to hike the price up. Much like her father and Brad, she was a barebones kind of gal. The American West held a special appeal for her.
At last she turned to Jade, who was still snuggled under a blanket. “That was Brad’s father,” she said in Chinese. “He traced Liang to Breckenridge, Colorado.”
Fifteen minutes later, she and Jade checked out of the hotel and were on a shuttle bus heading for car rentals. The number of rental agencies was staggering, so they went with the most familiar brand to Chinese: Hertz.
At the counter, May perused the extensive list of models from which to choose. She and Jade had to excuse themselves and take a seat in a corner of the busy office just to decide on a car.
“Do we want speed or comfort?” Jade asked.
As they were both pilots, May knew what Jade was getting at. However, the extensive American highway system cried out for comfort. “Besides, this isn’t China,” she reminded Jade. “You have to drive the speed limit.”
“How about something that climbs rocks?” Jade’s finger traveled down to the four-wheel-drives.
They didn’t look too imposing. “They look kind of cute,” May said. Who knew what off-road pursuits lay in store?
Half an hour later, Jade was behind the wheel of a canary-yellow Ford Escape SUV, and May was consulting a rental agency map of Colorado. She headed them west through the city and toward the nearby mountains.
She lifted her eyes to the snow-clad peaks. At last she began to sense her father’s presence.
Brad helped Earl limp out of Beijing Station into the cold night air. His first objective was to get his friend checked out by a doctor.
They took a taxi northwest through the city to a reliable hospital that Earl knew about. The driver had never been to that obscure corner of the city before, and Earl had to direct his every turn. The nearest landmark was a Holiday Inn. Several blocks later, Earl had the driver take them into an anonymous-looking courtyard.
Brad was impressed. The sign read “Beijing Family United.” His buddy sure knew his way around the city. If Brad tried to make his way to a hospital given his language deficit and relative unfamiliarity with the city, he would have ended up at a slaughterhouse.
He helped Earl hobble out of the cab and onto an elevator. They reached the top floor and stepped out into a lushly decorated waiting room full of expatriate families. Brad arranged an emergency visit while Earl writhed uncomfortably in a seat. The next available appointment would be in an hour.
“I’ll wait with you,” Brad said. He looked at the other patients who were there with fevers and runny noses. “Hope there’s no avian flu going around.”
Small children were pointing at Brad’s blood-soaked clothes.
“Why don’t you go home,” Earl said. “I’ll be okay. Besides, you’re bad luck. You attract trouble, and I could use a little down time.”
Brad had dragged Earl through a lot that day. It had started with an attack on a chairlift and ended up with a train squashing their assailant in a dark tunnel.
“Okay.” He stood to leave and patted his friend on the good leg. Earl was right. He was a magnet for trouble. “I’ll go.”
He stepped into the elevator lobby, then turned to hear what sounded like a muffled cheer in the background.
Outside, he walked through the drab complex of buildings and waited for a taxi. He wanted to go home. But where, exactly, was that? Normally it was a re
fuge, a place where one felt comfortable and safe.
His home in Beijing was his apartment with May. But she was gone, and surely the hit men knew where he lived. Was it safe to return? He needed to pick up his passport and a few other things, but he didn’t need any more frantic escapes that day.
Finally a small red cab slowed down and stopped for him. “Sanlitun,” Brad said, stepping in. And the driver took him off to some part of the city where Brad may or may not have lived.
Beijing was a sprawling place, but the cab ride took longer than it should. Maybe it was just the heavy Saturday night traffic. Finally, when the chintzy yellow Christmas lights of Bar Alley came into view, he knew that he was home. He directed the cabbie down a winding side street and toward a sign for his favorite Indian restaurant.
He looked around for policemen or soldiers that might be lurking in the shadows. Cars were parked here and there, but appeared empty. He asked the driver to pull up short of the building and had the money ready as soon as he stopped.
Key ready, he strode quickly to the metal gate that protected the apartment building. Seconds later, he slipped into the front courtyard and locked the gate behind him. He slipped into the building. Inside was no warmer than outside. Normally he would press the light switch, but not tonight. He felt his way up the stairway toward his second-floor apartment. There was no sound, only the distant hum of traffic.
He reached the second floor without incident. Nobody was lurking in the shadows. He unlocked his door, opened it and closed it in one swift motion. When he shoved his key back into his pocket, his hand was trembling.
He reached for the light switch, but stopped himself. He didn’t want to alert others to his presence.
So he stumbled toward the bedroom where he kept a flashlight. Even in the darkness, the place had the innocent and unsuspecting smells of everyday life: oolong tea, garlic, ginger, and dust. The furniture was all in place. If hit men wanted to intimidate him, they would have rearranged things. But they hadn’t.
