Razing Beijing: A Thriller (58 page)

“Can the weapon be used against an individual?” asked the
public security minister.

Deng blinked his eyes. Around the chamber he noted
titillating interest. The question brought to mind Dr. Zhao’s poignant
observation that they could bring to bear the resources of physics and
engineering, but in the end a political finger would be poised on the trigger. “I
am sorry, comrade. An individual
what?”

While Rong Peng calmly appraised Deng’s remark, the others
appeared thrown off by his unexpected reply; Was it insolence, or merely a
joke?

“I meant an individual
person
, of course. And, maybe
parts
of an individual.”

Deng folded his arms. “Mobile objects such as missiles and
people pose their own unique programming challenges.”

Rong motioned to adjourn. “For those of you who desire more
information on Fourth Line, Commissioner Deng is planning another demonstration.
This time we will convene inside our new satellite control facility, later—”

“If I may,” the finance minister inquired, addressing
himself to Deng. “I have not been privy to the details of the U.S. missile
defense system. And I admit to not having closely followed the evolution of your
Fourth Line. Worse, my engineering talents have long ago abandoned me. In any
case, how on
earth
did you manage such a feat, whereas the Americans
have not, despite their obvious advantage in payload launch capabilities?”

Deng nodded thoughtfully—he suspected that the nuance
revealed by the question was beyond the grasp of others in the room. Much as
Deng would have liked to, this was not the forum to delve into the difficulties
they had overcome involving things like turbomachinery dynamics, energy
consumption, and primary mirror limitations that the roominess of a space
shuttle payload bay would have simplified.

“Actually, it was the quantum teleportation breakthroughs
at CERN and elsewhere that came to our rescue. These at the time were part of
ongoing efforts to advance beyond the silicon-based limits of highly
parallel-processing computing.” Deng allowed himself a smile. He had been among
the first to see the military potential, well before intelligence reports that
the Americans were doubling-down their environmental initiatives, which had
finally made it all possible. “As the vice chairman so eloquently put it, we
now have at our disposal the ability to wage asymmetrical warfare—something
totally distinct and apart from any threat our enemies are able to wield.”

“I see, Commissioner.” Minister Huang nodded. “There is one
glaring problem, however.”

Deng braced himself. “What problem is that?”

“What am I to do with my tickets to the Baltimore
Ravens game?”

STANDING COMMITTEE MEMBERS
had each taken a moment to file past and congratulate Deng Zhen. Afterward,
Rong wordlessly ushered him to his Zhongnanhai Central Committee office where
Deputy State Security Minister Chen Ruihan was already waiting. Certain that
his son had been caught violating government Internet restrictions on his
behalf, Deng focused his eyes out the window in order to alleviate his rising
panic.

Rong angrily addressed Chen Ruihan. “I would like your
assessment of the prospect that the Americans have deduced our achievement.”

Deng slowly turned toward the rising state security star,
who for his part seemed confused by the question.

“It is difficult to be certain,” Chen responded.

“If it were easy I would have appointed an idiot to your
post. Commissioner Deng, I invited you here because we have arrived at a decision
tollgate. The question is what possible further use have we for your ‘market
basket of technology’ outside Richmond, Virginia. As a matter of strategy, we
should also consider what measures we might take to preserve our technological
lead. You of all people know how hard we have worked for that lead.”

It fit the pattern of the way this man seemed to operate,
Deng thought, that already Rong would think in such terms. “I wish I could
guarantee that some future technical setback will not again make it convenient
to dip into that well. On the other hand, we have come a long way in
establishing our own technology base. It is not clear that the CLI
corporation’s development template will have anything more to offer.”

“Is there any indication that the Americans are considering
plans to militarize the technology? It is a very important question. Please
consider carefully your answer.”

Chen thought a moment. “Nothing that our network has
revealed, no.”

“Perhaps now is the time, then, we should move to eliminate
that risk.” Rong turned to Deng. “That will be all, Commissioner. Unless you
have something to add...?”

“Actually, perhaps I misunderstood. When you say ‘eliminate
that risk,’ do you mean we should accelerate our own strategic development
plans?”

Rong seemed to examine his guest. “We operate by three
moves of the chess board. Thanks to you, we have achieved our first move. The
next requires an understanding of what our adversary is likely to do. What I intend
to have Comrade Chen do is fully eliminate their pieces from the board.”

RONG STARED WORRIEDLY
at
the door through which Deng Zhen had just departed. “For the record, I did
not
approve the target selected for that demonstration. It was foolish. But the old
man has standing among some of the committee members, and the thing was already
done. How is the situation with the traitor’s return working out?”

“Nothing significant to say. The woman’s condition has
stabilized, but she will probably die. I predict Dr. Zhao will then become a serious
impediment.”

Rong nodded. “You were to prepare options.”

Chen frowned deeply at the change of subject. “I have
examined several. One would be to simply turn the satellite device against the
American corporation, say, by extracting core memory elements of their
supercomputer.”

“Clever. I like the ironic purity in that.”

“This also has the advantage of providing yet another test
point, if you will. Properly executed, it might even be made to appear the
result of an accident, an experiment gone awry. But there are risks to this
approach.”

“Such as?”

“Well, there is no guarantee that, say, a technician would
not witness the event and survive. Any mystery surrounding such a calamity
would spawn an in-depth investigation, thereby contradicting our objectives.” He
bolstered the point by reminding Rong that their ongoing subterfuge had already
invited FBI scrutiny.

Rong eyed his young protégé. “You intentionally drew
attention to errors occurring on your watch. That was a dangerous tactic.”

“Actually, they were errors
prior
to my watch,” Chen
corrected him. “On the other hand, if I withhold such information I could be
accused of making recommendations on the basis of attempting to conceal them.

“As I was saying...the Americans have invested millions of
dollars in this facility—”

“Borrowed from us.”

Chen smiled. “And in the underlying technology, as have the
other countries involved in their research. So they may attempt to repair it.

“Now, I present this approach in the interest of
thoroughness, as I view it as being unnecessarily risky. I recommend we use
more conventional means at our disposal. We can institute a plan to have
support for the technology terminated by their Congress. Our primary source has
informed me that in this regard CLI is already vulnerable. This approach
reduces the likelihood of the Americans repairing the facility, at least in the
near term, as they might otherwise do should they perceive its destruction an
accident. Finally, this approach preserves the option later of having one of
our holding companies offer a restorative injection of cash in exchange for
equity, as is our usual method.”

“The timing?”

“It could be done relatively quickly.”

“Hmm. That standard you will be held to. How long do we...wait,
let’s examine this picture for a moment. The Americans would first need to make
their discovery of our achievement, which is only a matter of time. In that
respect most any action we take will serve to delay them. How long would they
need to construct a comparable weapon?”

“I am told that creating something from scratch is not the
same as knowing that the objective has already been reached, and working toward
it. Our ministry experts estimate the Americans would need half the time it
took us to complete the final design—a crash program. To then construct the
payload and package it inside a launch vehicle, thirty-six to forty months.”

“That long? This would seem to justify your lower-risk
approach, should we choose to put our faith in your numbers, that is. Very well.
Have Congress pull the plug. Only, have them do it before the next millennium.”

Monday, June 29

CHRISTINA LOREN BLOCH,
ESQ.,
of Squillaro, Hutchins and Bloch, sensed the deliveryman’s
lingering stare down her cleavage as she signed the electronic invoice.

“I guess people just like making our jobs tough,” the young
man said in an attempt at light conversation.

Ms. Bloch finished scribbling the wand and handed him back
the pad. “What did you say?” she asked, an edge to her voice.

The man gestured to the FedEx shipping envelope and
politely smiled. “Looks like they misspelled your name.”

“Oh.” Bloch feigned an inquisitive glance past her nose;
she had already noted the misspelling, of course. The standard shipping label
properly displayed the firm’s name in bold letters above the office address. Three
inches below, across the bottom in large case, the sender seemingly had made an
innocuous error by directing the letter to the attention of
C. L. Blok
.

Back inside her office, Bloch contemplated the envelope
lying unopened on the desk. She had many clients; some occasionally required
service beyond mere legal acumen. She selected a black felt-tip pen and placed
a large ‘X’ across the entire envelope. She slid the packet aside and reached
for her electronic organizer. Under ‘Evinn, Pauline,’ she selected the
appropriate telephone number. As it was evening and her partners now gone for
the day, she had available any one of several outside telephone lines. She
chose one at random and dialed the number.

Again she found the man’s voice in the recorded message
deep and alluring, a foreign accent...a smile came to her lips, imagining him
tall and exotic with a dark complexion, piercing eyes. This time the masculine
voice specifically requested the caller leave only a
name
and
number
—omitting
both his request for the time of the call
and
his offer to return the
call as soon as he could. She jotted his instructions down on a pad.

Chris Bloch waited for the beep. “Hello, Mr. Cullinane. I’m
calling to see if you could reschedule our next appointment? I’m afraid the
conflict is on my end. Thanks. Bye.” She hung up the phone.

As a further precaution, the misdirected number in fact
appeared in her Rolodex beside the name of a legitimate client, the single
misdialed digit an error easily explained. The content of her impromptu message
had no meaning other than to alert the man to tomorrow morning’s drop. As the
appointed method of any drop was this agent’s ongoing responsibility—one of a
possible three that were in use—his outgoing message had indicated by code the
next cutout in the sequence.

Chris Bloch verified from her organizer where that
happened to be; she sighed, realizing the inconvenience. She had hoped to drop
her dry cleaning off on the way into work. Silly, she thought, lightly rebuking
herself. There ought to be more than one cleaners in all of Brooklyn whom she
could trust with her wardrobe.

MOHAMMAD MOUSAVI
looked
up from his work as the sound of his own voice announced the incoming call—this
particular line he used only to record and retrieve telephone messages. Again
he heard the distinctly American voice of the unidentified woman. Again his
first impulse was to be distrusting, an impulse that had gradually become so
ingrained as to not receive his slightest notice.

The pipeline instructions had flowed from these same lips. When
Mousavi had challenged the new cutout with an unplanned confidence check using
a one-time pad, she returned the protocol. The operation had subsequently gone
smoothly enough—letter perfect in fact, right down to the passport drop in
Frankfurt on their return to the United States. Mousavi dismissed any further
concern. The female contact was probably the result of his handling officer in
the Washington, D.C. consulate making routine security adjustments. Certainly
he could trust
them
not to arbitrarily assign so important a task to
just any infidel whore.

With that introspection, Mousavi returned his attention to his
preparation of four special detonators. The process was infuriatingly delicate.
It appeared as though he had finally mastered it.

Using a high-speed Dremel tool, he fashioned four cuts into
a window, about one-centimeter square, positioned at roughly the major diameter
of the otherwise plain incandescent light bulbs. The point of the exercise was
that the filament remained fully intact.

He screwed one into a socket and connected it to a dc
power source. Not certain what to expect, he stood back and toggled the switch to
introduce a two-hundred eighty-eight volt potential across the circuit. The
filament flared brightly, fueled by the oxygen not normally inside the bulb. Several
seconds later the tungsten filament fully oxidized and broke, extinguishing its
piercing light. Mousavi smiled at the thin stream of smoke.