Insider X (19 page)

31

FATTEN YOU AND round out those curves of yours.

The colonel’s crass japery wasn’t a joke.  Na looked in amazement at the breakfast offerings displayed on the buffet table.  In front of her she saw fresh fruit.  Some sliced.  Some whole.  All kinds of fruit: dragon fruit, cherries, rambutans, bananas, apples, kiwi, pineapple, peaches, grapes, mangoes, watermelons… practically every fruit she’d ever seen was in front of her right now.

Fruit—particularly fresh fruit—was something Na rarely ate.  They sold it at markets, but the quality was not always so good.  And it was usually way too expensive.  This fruit, however, looked amazing.

“It’s all organic,” Aiguo said.  “Same goes for the vegetables.  No chemicals—no growth hormones—like you find at street stalls.  We eat very well, and very healthy here.”

“This is every day?” Na said.

“Sometimes they have more selections,” Aiguo said.  “Are you not hungry?”

Na’s tray was empty.  She had walked past many of the offerings, not sampling anything, yet.  Aiguo and she were in an enormous cafeteria.  The din was something.  There were hundreds of uniformed men and women all about her age that were talking and eating at the banquet tables.

The place looked like it could seat well over two thousand, possibly more.  Na was trying to do the math in her head, counting the tables and how many seats each table had.  Fifty seats per table.  Thirty-five tables in here, and more tables available in an enjoining hall.  So many…

To feed this number of people in this elaborate manner… the expense had to be incredible.  Because it wasn’t just fruits and cooked vegetables she was seeing.  There were prepared dishes.  Hot and cold.  She saw meats, fresh-baked breads, poached and scrambled eggs, seared chicken strips in noodle dishes, and so many other offerings.  And the drink bar was just as abundant in its selections.  Teas, juices, milk, coffee… almost anything a person could desire to drink for breakfast was available.  Except for sodas.  She didn’t see any sodas.  Aiguo pointed some things out, as they walked past the buffet tables.

All the food offerings were of the highest quality, he said.  No high-fructose products, like colas, were ever served.  And no diet drinks, like Diet Coke, either.  They wanted everyone healthy, was what Aiguo said.  American products like Coke, Diet Coke, Fanta, Sprite, and all that other junk just rotted teeth.  It broke down the enamel.  Was very bad for you.

“Even Diet Coke does that,” Aiguo said.  “Some of the seminars they have are very helpful at teaching us how to care for our bodies and avoid the evil products coming from America.”

Aiguo laughed.  “Of course, after duty, you may not be so good.  They do serve other drinks, as you may have discovered last night.”

Na was taking it all in.  She heard what he was saying, but wasn’t processing it all, least not yet.  “This… this is considered duty?” she said.

“No.”  Aiguo chuckled.  “But breakfast is very important.  You must eat before duty.  Fuels the mind.  It allows you to do your best at your job.  It will enable you to be creative.  You do very important work here.  Please, start helping yourself to something.  Fill your tray.  You need to eat.  I will get in trouble if I bring you late to duty and you have an empty stomach.  Please.”

Na nodded, not needing to be asked twice.  She began to help herself to some of the offerings—the fruits, breads and fresh organic scrambled eggs.  A moment later, they walked over to a table that had some open seats.

“Hi Na,” a girl said who was walking away from the table with an empty tray.

It was a girl Na had met last night.  Na nodded and said hello.  She remembered the girl’s name, two seconds too late.  The girl had already walked past.

Aiguo sat down and Na took a seat across from him.

“Everyone is so friendly here,” Na said.

Aiguo nodded.  “Your new family.  Many wonderful people.  I don’t think you will ever want to leave.”

Na suddenly realized she was starving.  How that was possible after eating so much last night, she didn’t know.  She began to help herself to what was on her tray.  The eggs were beyond incredible.  So savory and buttery; they practically melted in her mouth.

Across from her, Aiguo was stuffing himself.  With a full mouth, he told her she could get more, if she wanted.  They had a few more minutes.  Na politely declined the offer.  She was already getting full.

Inside her, Kitty Kat wasn’t making a peep.  Wait.  She heard her.  Kitty Kat was purring.  Not even this grey man’s company was bothering her.

“Okay,” Aiguo said, as he finished what was on his tray.  “Are you ready?”

Na—acting the role of a proper well-trained young lady (thank you, Ms. Etiquette on YouTube)—dabbed her mouth with her napkin and nodded.  As she’d eaten, she’d been watching Aiguo and others around her.  She couldn’t figure out why Huiliang had acted so odd—so fearful—around this building.

She wasn’t seeing any similar emotions from the folks here.  Most of those eating either looked happy, bored, or just tired.  She didn’t see, or feel, emotions like fear or nervousness.  Nothing like that emoting from those around her.

However, she was sensing something else.  It seemed that Aiguo was quite taken with her.  Maybe it was like the colonel said:
Here less than twelve hours and you already have two admirers!
 

Lucky her.

She had a grey man interested in her.

Na got a chill, and not because of Aiguo’s interest.  He may seem nice, but she wasn’t fooled.  She read the situation for what it was.  The colonel had known about Crush, which meant
she was being watched
.  Everyone here was being watched, she figured.

Na made sure her face didn’t betray any of her thoughts.  She wore a calm expression like a mask.  She stood and followed Aiguo.  Aiguo showed her where they were to put their trays.  It was off in another area.  It was very well organized with bins and places each item should go.

After they finished, they washed up in a sanitary wash area.  There were dozens of soap dispensers and long communal sinks.  As she dried her hands with a paper towel, Na checked herself in the mirror to make sure she looked okay.  She noticed that Aiguo was looking at her with puppy-dog eyes.

Wow.  She must be putting off Aphrodite Almighty pheromones.  She needed to bottle this up and keep it for later.  Because right now there was a part of her that hoped she’d see Crush again.

“Ready for duty?” Aiguo said.

Na nodded and followed him.  They headed towards some doors.  The doors slid open as they approached. 

Inside her, Kitty Kat had stopped purring.  She was alert, her big green eyes taking everything in.

We’ll be okay, Na said to Kitty Kat inside her head.  It can’t be that bad.

Oh yes it can
, Kitty Kat said. 
I think they eat cats.

Silly Kitty Kat, they don’t eat cats.

How do you know?

Na didn’t answer Kitty Kat.  Because right now she was observing her new surroundings.  They had just walked through the doors.

!-!

Make that !-! +

(Which for those that don’t understand symbol gibberish, translates to OMG and BIG ALIEN BEAST WITH ROWS OF EYES.)

32

Station 5, several kilometers outside Chengdu

MARKS AND LIP parked their white van next to the squat building.  Place looked like a concrete bunker.  Masonry construction.  No windows.  Only one door, made of solid steel.

Marks checked his timepiece.  0343.  Dead of night.  Looked it too.  Wasn’t a soul out, or another vehicle in sight.  Not that this place was supposed to get many visitors.  The information they’d been given, which came from a reliable source, said this station was one hundred percent automated.  Wasn’t staffed or guarded—least not with live bodies.  Marks was surprised to see there were even parking spots striped next to the building.

Next to him, in the driver’s seat, Lip was unrecognizable.  He wasn’t wearing the falsies and didn’t have the cheek inserts anymore.  He’d gone with a new look, which was a slight improvement, at least from the dental side.  Face wise, it was still a toss up.  Before or after—which was better?  Hard to say.

Before, Lip had resembled a giant chipmunk with bad teeth and nuts in his cheeks.  Now?  Now he looked like a Chinese guy with no nuts and better teeth.

This van had come with plenty of goodies back in its cargo hold.  They were sporting some now.  They’d done the impressions a while ago.  Silicone technology was somethin’ else nowadays.  Wasn’t just movie stuff anymore.  Mission Impossible type masks really could be manufactured.  If you had the funds and access to the right molding equipment, a very convincing facsimile could be created of anyone—male or female.

Lip was going the male route.  Good thing.  Lip as a woman wasn’t pretty.  Couple years ago, he’d tried to pull it off.  And that one time was enough.

Nothing to this.  Sleepless in Seattle… I’m Meg Ryan
,
Lip had said.

Marks had just raised an eyebrow in response.  Meg Ryan he liked.  Least he had when he saw her movies twenty-some-odd years ago.

He was a fan… of Meg Ryan.  Lip had not looked like Meg Ryan, and he certainly hadn’t sounded like her.  He’d reminded Marks of a Julia Child impersonator that was cooking with one too many sausages.  Lip’s natural voice tended to be bookish—like an accountant’s; wasn’t exactly oozing testosterone.  Funny thing was, when he actually tried to speak with a female voice, it was like he went the other direction.  Went deeper and huskier.

“You’re speaking like a tranny that took the wrong shots,” Marks had told him.

No, I’m not
,
Lip had said. 
I’m Meg Ryan.

“Stop it,” Marks had said.  “One, I’m getting sick.  And two, you don’t sound like Meg Ryan.”

But I am
, Lip had said. 
I’m Meg Ryan and you have mail… from me, cutie.

“Wrong movie,” Marks had said.

Oh… ooo…
Lip had said, suddenly switching to that scene from When Harry Met Sally.

“That’s enough,” Marks had said.  “Bad enough looking at you now; let alone hearing this shit.  You’re shriveling up my manhood right now.”

Oh, am I?  That excites me.  You big stud.  Take me to bed or lose me forever
,
Lip had said.

Unfrickenbelievable.  That had been years ago.  Fuck a duck.  Marks got pissed all over again.

“Don’t ever try and speak like a woman again,” Marks said.

“What?” Lip said.  “What are you talking about?”

“Just don’t do it,” Marks said.

“You are very strange sometimes,” Lip said.  “Get the bag.  Let’s get this done.”

“Why don’t you get the bag?” Marks said.

“Are we really going to do this?” Lip said.  “You know your role.  You’re the helper, I’m the doer.”

“Get your own fucking bag,” Marks said and walked towards the squat building.

“What’s come over you?” Lip said, reaching back into the cab and grabbing the bag.

Marks ignored him.  Fuck a duck.  They were like two granny-aged women sometimes.  He didn’t join the NSA to become a nag.  Or a bag carrier.  Or fuckin’ Lip’s butt for jokes.  Took a month to get that disturbing image of Lip dressed as a woman, doing his impression of Meg Ryan, out of his head.  And still, even when he thought he’d gotten rid of that nightmare, it revisited him sometimes.  Like now.

Must be zombie hour.  The freaks were coming out.

“Is it your time of month?” Lip said, catching up to him, carrying the bag.

“Fuck you.  Open the door,” Marks said.

“Give me a second,” Lip said.  He pulled out something from the bag.

“Fuck is that?” Marks said, looking at a cylindrical-looking thing that had two wires protruding from the top.

“It’s my dildo,” Lip said.  “What do you care?  Do you really want me to explain how these things work to you?”

“No,” Marks said.

“Thought so.  Now shut up and let me work,” Lip said.

Marks took watch.  Lip got the door unlocked in thirty seconds flat.

“You’re slipping,” Marks said.

Lip ignored him and pushed open the massive door.  They walked inside.  Marks followed him, turning on his moonbeam.

Place was packed with equipment.  All of it humming.  This bunker was a routing station that was owned by the telecommunication giant, China Telecom.  The fiber optic cables that routed through this station contained ninety-nine percent of the Internet traffic that came out of Chengdu.

The Information Technology Security Certification Center, otherwise known as China’s Internet police, already had this place tapped up the wazoo.  Very sophisticated software had been installed by those guys, which was a ‘front-end’ interception system.  It essentially collected everything that went through these fiber-optic cables and sent it to a ‘back end’ monitoring center that could analyze those transmissions.  All the data transmissions: voice, fax, video, email, fuckin’ everything except smoke signals, were being “heard” and “dissected” by the PLA.

 “Traffic analysis” and “interception” were the buzzwords the spy kids used.  Marks was up on the lingo.  This was his and Lip’s bag, after all.  Part of their job description.  They were “cable guys”.  Had done this type of job on almost every continent.

Tap the tappers.  China’s Internet police had made their job easy.  Those guys had already set up the eavesdropping equipment that tapped the trunk lines.  Piggy-backing off that equipment should be easy.  So easy, Marks could almost do it.  Still, he preferred Lip to take the lead.

“You want me to hold your bag?” Marks said.

“So now you want to be my helper?” Lip said.

“Give me the fucking bag,” Marks said.

“No,” Lip said.

“You’re going to take all the credit for this, aren’t you?” Marks said.

“What the fuck do you ever do?” Lip said.  “It’s times like this, I realize you don’t do jack shit.  I do all the work.”  Lip took out some of his tools.  He showed Marks one.  “Do you even know what this is?”

“A screwdriver,” Marks said.

“No,” Lip said.  “It’s a Number 9.”

“Number 9?  You just made that shit up,”

Lip ignored him, and got to work.

THESE JOBS LOOKED technical, but there really wasn’t a lot to this.  Not from Marks’s perspective, at least.  Lip talked a big game, but looking at what he was doing right now, it didn’t look that hard.  The device did all the work.  Lip just had to install it.

The device was an Internet “packet sniffer”.  It had other names, which the techies used, like “Carnivore” and “DCS-1000”.  Basically, as Lip explained it one time, it could sift through Internet traffic and transmit that data in real time to any location Lip preconfigured.

Lip, if he wanted to, could send the traffic halfway around the world to the NSA’s “Super Vault” in Idaho (also called “Big Ears”) or to any other repository he chose.  The device, tiny as it was, was packed with all sorts of software that could filter raw intercepted data.  That software enabled some very advanced “data-mining” to happen, which parsed out the wheat from the chaff.  It was one of the more useful surveillance tools in their tool kit.  They’d used this device, and other devices similar to this one, to bug other telecommunication gateways.  It particularly came in handy when they had a specific target they wanted to monitor.  In this case, they wanted to capture everything coming from Facility 67096. 

“See that?” Lip said, pointing to a bundle of fiber-optic cables that he’d just uncovered.  The bundled cables were lit up like LED Christmas lights.

“Yeah.”

“Those tiny cables contain all the traffic coming from Facility 67096,” Lip said.

“How can you tell?” Marks said.

“Blueprints help, but I didn’t even need them.  Big giveaway here is that those are the only cables in this joint that aren’t tapped.  Guess they figured they didn’t need to tap their own operation.”

“Makes sense,” Marks said.

“Want to do the honors?” Lip said.

“Let’s not get crazy,” Marks said.

“Fraidy cat,” Lip said.  He installed the device.  It took him less than ten minutes to get it done.

“We do good work, don’t we?” Lip said, as he finished up.

 “Your bag, sir,” Marks said.

“Why, thank you.”

A MINUTE LATER, they were back in the van.  Lip drove them off the property.  There was no signage anywhere.  Nothing indicating the station was owned by China Telecom.   Place was just a concrete bunker in the middle of nowhere. 

Chinese had the habit of doing that.  They’d figured it out that the best way to keep things on the down low was to use inverse psychology.  That routing station was obviously an important asset.  But they were hiding it in plain sight.  No signage.  No security.  It looked like a deserted utility shed from the outside.  A person would have no idea that it contained one of the PLA’s main bug farms for the Sichuan Province.  With the hardware in that little shed the PLA were spying on over 400 million people.

And in about an hour or so, Lip and he were going to be taking a page out of the PLA’s same playbook.  They were going to have a viewing window into one of the PLA’s top-secret spy operations.

Facility 67096.  That name alone was a big red flag.  Sounded generic like a warehouse.  Intentional, of course.  The knew the PLA’s M.O .  The more harmless a place sounded, the more important it probably was.

Marks leaned back in his seat and got comfortable. 
Operation Grilled Catfish
was now underway.  Marks closed his eyes.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Lip said.

“What does it look like?” Marks said.  “I’m taking a nap.  Wake me when we get there.”