Origin - Season Two (25 page)

The platoon commander raised a hand and waved for the driver of the first truck to enter the compound. Duan led the way inside on foot.

The bunker opened on a tunnel that dropped steeply for almost a hundred yards. At the bottom there was a wide concrete landing overlooking two submarine pens over a hundred feet below. Only one of the pens was occupied.

Known as the Xia-Class, the Chinese Type 092 had been China’s first attempt at building an indigenous ballistic missile-carrying nuclear-powered submarine, SSBN for short. It was widely believed in Western intelligence circles that the second of these to be constructed, the Lo Yang, had been lost in an accident at sea shortly after her maiden voyage. The Lo Yang had, in fact, never even been completed. Beset by problems from the outset, the project had been placed on hold indefinitely, and with the introduction of the newer Type 094, officially mothballed by the Navy in 1982. What few people knew, even inside the Chinese military, was that the Lo Yang had survived both her imagined and real end. Towed away under cover of darkness from her berth at Huludao, she now rested in this very pen near the port city of Qingdao.

As a hull with neither a reactor nor any control systems, the Lo Yang herself was of no use or value as a submarine. Nor had Duan ever intended that she should be. What interested him was her cargo.

Safely tucked away in half of her twelve launch tubes had been six JL-1 nuclear ballistic missiles. Of all Duan’s achievements during his time as director of Project 38, this one was by far his greatest. All six warheads had been meticulously erased from both the Navy’s records and the inventory of the nuclear strategic command, and thus had effectively ceased to exist.

The JL-1 in its ballistic form was over thirty-five feet high and weighed almost thirty-two thousand pounds. The warheads had now been detached from their solid-fuel rockets and the nuclear components transferred to a more suitable receptacle. They now sat in six steel cylinders lined up at one end of the platform.

Duan directed the truck forward. As soon as it came to a stop, several soldiers began rolling back the canopy while a group of four men lifted the first container into the back. The words stenciled to the outside indicated it was a generic shipping container belonging to the People’s Liberation Army Ground Forces on route from the port of Qingdao to the guard barracks at Dandong near the North Korean border.

“Move out,” Duan ordered. “Get the next truck down here. I want to be on our way within the hour.”

It took a little longer, but within two hours the convoy was loaded and back on the road.

Phoenix, Arizona

Sunday 17 June 2007

1000 MST

Mike’s remaining concern, that his sudden return to civilian life after two decades with the Bureau might run into internal opposition, turned out to be unfounded. Here again, the eclectic and multi-faceted Mr. Wentworth had proven just how far his reach extended.

Mike would receive his full federal employee pension, as well as credits for his military service, and two separate one-off tax refunds amounting to $75,000, both legitimate entitlements buried somewhere in the catacombs of the US Tax Code. Director Gobain himself had flown in to personally hand Mike his certificate of service in a ceremony that had started as a formal presentation and ended in something more akin to a campaign rally. Every single member of his office had greeted the news of his candidacy with enthusiasm, although how much of that had to do with the fact that the director had made the announcement Mike didn’t know. The occasion was a perfect mix of anticipation and dread. He had been a federal employee for most of his adult life. The idea of moving to the other side of the fence made him decidedly uncomfortable. And now here he was, standing in his own campaign headquarters and feeling as out of place as a Klansman at a Black Panther meeting.

“Mike?” Susan said, “You okay?”

Mike looked around at the flurry of activity. “That depends on what you mean by okay.”

Before she could say anything, a clean-cut young man in his early twenties stepped through the door and surveyed the busy scene with one comically raised eyebrow. He was wearing an immaculately tailored suit of charcoal gray and his hair was so perfectly set it almost looked fake. It took Mike a moment to place him.

“Who’s that?” Susan asked.

“That,” Mike said, “is my worst nightmare.”

“You know him?”

“We met in DC.”

Sergio spotted them and began walking in their direction, taking every precaution not to make physical contact with anyone.

“Wow,” Susan said, “he couldn’t be more gay if he was dancing to the
Sound of Music
.”

Sergio stopped short and gave them both the benefit of a subtle but thorough once-over. “Mr. Banner, it’s good to see you again. And this lovely young lady must be Susan.”

Susan blushed slightly as Sergio shook her hand with his right while simultaneously reaching for the hem of her dress with his left and rubbing the material gently between his thumb and index fingers. He stepped forward and whispered something to her. Susan suddenly burst out laughing and the whole office came to a momentary stop.

“Nothing to see here,” Sergio announced, then turned to Mike. “I’m afraid your wardrobe is stuck in customs at Heathrow, but I managed to have some lesser specimens made up in New York which should arrive later today. I’ve also arranged for the photographer to be at your house at three for the family shots.”

“Sounds fine, “Mike said.

“Excellent,” Sergio said. “Then if you don’t mind, I’m going to steal your wife for a couple of hours.”

Mike looked at Susan who smiled and said, “He’s going to help me rescue my wardrobe.”

Mike fished a credit card from his wallet and held it out. Sergio looked at it as if it were covered in fecal matter and made a disgusted shooing gesture. “Why don’t I just open an account for you? It’s a lot easier.”

Mike followed them outside and watched as Sergio opened the passenger door of his convertible BMW roadster for Susan, then got in himself and drove off.

No sooner had they disappeared from view than a bright yellow school bus pulled into the parking lot and stopped outside the office. Pasted across the full length of the bus, below the windows, was a colorful banner that read: BANNER—LET’S ELECT OUR
OWN
SENATOR FOR ONCE. The door opened and Beth, his office manager, stepped out. Her brother waved at Mike from behind the wheel and Mike felt his own hand rise in response quite of its own accord. Behind Beth came a steady procession of male senior citizens, each wearing a T-shirt with his own smiling face on it, and waving a small flag. If everything that had happened so far had seemed surreal, the scene now playing out felt as if it was happening to someone else entirely.

“Mr. Banner,” Beth said, “I’d like you to meet the local chapter of the Phoenix Veteran’s Association.”

The first in line, a frail white-haired man with one arm and a Purple Heart pinned to the front of his T-shirt, extended his left hand and said, “About goddam time we had a real human being in the race. This state ain’t had a straight-talking representative in Washington since Ike’s day. Name’s Douglas Arthur, Master Sergeant Douglas Arthur, First Battalion, Nineteenth Marines. I’d shake your right but I lost mine on Guam in ’44. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

“And it’s an honor to meet you, Master Sergeant,” Mike said. “I was Second Battalion, Seventh myself.” And then, before he knew he was even going to say it, Mike lowered his voice and added, “Lost my virginity on Maui in ’75.”

The man looked blank for a moment, then the penny dropped and he burst into a fit of croaking laughter. He put his hand on Mike’s arm and said, “You get me a handful of them flyers and I’ll take the grandkids out on Sunday for a spot of local electioneering.”

“I’d really appreciate that,” Mike said.

Mike greeted each of the veterans in turn, and found the exercise more invigorating with each handshake. By the time he reached the end of the line the group of ex-soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines had all been enlisted in the cause, some even promising to resort to militancy if needed; offers which Mike firmly but politely discouraged.

“That was one hell of a performance,” Beth said when she had herded the group back onto the bus.

It was only then that Mike noticed one of the staff had been discreetly filming the event from the sidelines.

“Is that really necessary?” Mike asked.

The answer came not from Beth, but from behind Mike. “Only if you want to win.”

Mike turned to see a middle-aged woman in a maroon suit smiling at him. She stepped forward and put out her hand. “Geraldine Connor, media relations. It’s nice to finally meet you, Mike. And I have to agree, that
was
quite a performance.”

“I’m not sure I like that word,” Mike said, sounding a little more harsh than he intended.

Geraldine laughed. “Don’t read too much into it. It’s just industry jargon. If I thought you were acting, I wouldn’t be here. And don’t worry about the camera, at least not that one. It’s only here to get you used to the idea of being filmed. Speaking of which, your first interview with the local news is in three days. I’d like to do a few dry runs before then if that’s okay.”

“When you say local news,” Mike said, “you mean the papers, right?”

“Channel 6,” Geraldine said, “live at seven on Tuesday. I find it’s best to hit the ground running, especially when you’re dealing with vultures like Ortega.”

“I don’t follow,” Mike said.

“He’s a snake. He’s got his hands in the pockets of every major defense contractor in the state. He’s also a two-term mayor with eight years on Capitol Hill. You’re an ex-marine who’s spent the last twenty with the FBI. You have no political record for him to attack, so he’ll go after you on the grounds of inexperience, make you look like an amateur who has no idea what he’s doing and no business playing in the big leagues. Normally I would recommend a head to head, using his connections to big business to make it clear that he’s out of touch with the man in the street and so on. But I don’t think we need to do that. I think your best bet in this fight is to go in pushing a positive approach and ignore the opposition completely. It’s an unusual strategy, but then it’s an unusual situation. We make it clear right from the beginning that you don’t do cut-throat politics. The message is that you’re going to run your office the way you run your campaign, focused on the issues that matter and nothing else. It suits your personality. And it will drive Ortega crazy.”

“Works for me,” Mike said. “As for live TV, I’m getting nervous just thinking about it.”

“You’ll do just fine,” Geraldine said. “Once I’m done with you, you’ll do just fine.”

Zurich, Switzerland
Monday 18 June 2007

0900 CEST

Rex was sitting at his desk just outside the server room where no fewer than six monitors had been mounted to a frame on the wall in front of him. Five of the screens were populated by stock market indexes, an ever-changing jumble of red and green letters and numbers that were, at least in theory, a virtual heart rate monitor of the world economy. But Rex was ignoring these for the moment. What interested him was the screen directly in front of him, where two windows now stood open. The first was the non-descript interface of the hacking software he was using, a program of which Mitch Rainey would no doubt have been proud. The second showed a series of account numbers in white against a black background. Below each account number was a series of dated transactions running from the low thousands to several hundreds of thousands, and all denominated in US dollars.

“Mags,” Rex said, not bothering to look up.

“What?”

“You better come have a look at this.”

Magda got up from her desk and made the short trip across the office.

“I’ve found the money,” Rex said.

“All of it?”

“Maybe. Most of it anyway.”

Magda leaned down to look at the screen. “What am I looking at?”

“The internal sub accounts of the Bank of China at the Bank for International Settlements.”

She glanced at him in surprise, “How—”

“You really want me to explain?” Rex said.

She considered this for a moment and said, “Would it help?”

“Probably not.”

“Then no.”

“Alright,” Rex said. “So this is why we weren’t getting anywhere. It looks like the boys and girls in Basel have got a little sideline going. It’s completely illegal, and a flagrant violation of their own charter, but then when did that ever stop them, right? We couldn’t find any transactions because all they’re doing is moving digits around between the Chinese and British national accounts.”

“So who’s paying the suppliers?” she asked.

Rex scrolled down several pages and pointed at the screen. “Pegasus Holdings of London, by the looks of it.”

“Who?”

“No idea,” Rex said. “I’ve never heard of them. The money is moving through the Bank of England to TriStar Capital, then on to Pegasus. There, that’s one of the payments. Three hundred and forty thousand in February and another seventy-five in March. I’ll have to find a way into the Pegasus servers to see where it went from there, but I think it’s safe to say we already know.”

“I’d better call Caroline,” Magda said, then hesitated and added, “Whatever you’re doing can’t be traced back to here, can it?”

Rex didn’t answer right away.

“Rex? It can’t, can it?”

Rex closed the window, then moved his mouse pointer to the button on the hacking interface labeled
terminate
and clicked. “Not anymore.”

“Not anymore?”

“Relax. If anyone was on to me I would have known.”

“I hope you’re right,” Magda said. “Because a raid by the Swiss Federal Police right now would be extremely inconvenient for both of us.”

Rex ignored this. “Why do you think she wants this stuff?”

“If Caroline wanted us to know she would have told us. How long will it take you to get the rest?”