Razing Beijing: A Thriller (59 page)

THE NEXT MORNING, MOUSAVI
entered
the Franklin Avenue subway entrance as he frequently did, eyes systematically
scanning the crowd of commuters for the unbidden stare or unremarkable gesture.

A graduate of Tehran’s highly regarded Dar-ul-Fonun
Polytechnic Institute, the spy possessed the customary engineer’s eye for
detail—a trait appreciated by the Ministry of Intelligence & Security
officer who had recruited him inside the trendy Montmartre cafe. As a student
living in Paris, Mousavi had already grown to resent the invasiveness of
American culture. The clincher had been his fellow Iranian’s lure of a posh
flat overlooking the Parc de Montsouris; the cost of completing his masters
degree at l’Ecole Polytechnique would also be covered. As he gradually proved
his competence, his responsibilities increased. He helped conduct surveillance
of a safe house outside Paris being used by Mossad. A forged Canadian passport
made simple his first significant task, that of boarding a Norwegian cruise
ship in the Caribbean port of Charlotte Amalie. Five kilos of Semtex remotely
detonated inside his luggage had suitably terrified not only the vacationing
party of retired Knesset, but also for a time any Jew traveling anywhere in the
world. His assault on American arrogance soon included symbolic attacks on
their Holocaust Museum and, most recently, the Trans-Alaskan pipeline. As an
Aryan Shi’a, Mohammad Mousavi was neither theologically averse to the notion of
martyrdom nor partial to the idea of personally embracing it. For Mousavi, the
gratification in completing such tasks vastly exceeded even the frequently
harrowing risk of his capture.

Mousavi stepped off the subway at Flatbush Avenue. The
parking garage was a few blocks away; the commute to his engineering position
at the private security firm in northern New Jersey required a car, a roomy but
not too extravagant Buick Lucerne. Upon exiting the subway to the street he
then approached the news stand; the sidewalks and streets were too busy to
effectively check for a tail. Standing behind the counter of the kiosk was his
Turkish friend. The two men made eye contact.

“
Times
this morning, sir?”

“If you please,” Mousavi replied.

The Turk turned and removed a newspaper from among the
dozens of various publications lining his shelves. In Mousavi’s palm as he
accepted the paper was a folded hundred dollar bill. Eight seconds after
stepping up to the kiosk, the transaction was complete.

SPECIAL AGENT HILDEBRANDT
looked
up from the photos and directed a questioning glance toward each of the two
junior investigators assigned to his case. “Do you think she could have just as
easily bought the magazine when she was inside the pharmacy?” He glanced again
at the picture of the lawyer standing at the newspaper stand. The angle was
bad. A judge could argue that she had merely set down her purse and umbrella on
the counter in order to free her hands to pay for the magazine. Even that was
evident only by peering through an unfocused maze of pedestrians. This being
his first opportunity to conduct surveillance with the metropolitan New York
office, Hildebrandt shook his head.
But
Jesus
these poor bastards
have a tough job
, Hildebrandt thought.
No wonder so many criminals
disappear in this place.

“The pharmacy did have the same issue in stock.” Agent
Nicholas Brophy rubbed his eyes. “We checked.”

Luckily, that much of the surveillance photographs was
clear, the size of
Life
magazine having helped. “It’s a thin rationale.”

“It’s something. The check-out counter inside the pharmacy
would have been less chaotic.”

Hildebrandt set the photographs down. “What else?”

Brophy sighed. “Starbucks with her boyfriend, the pharmacy,
the magazine, the cleaners, her office, lunch. A thousand brush-pass
opportunities in between. She got to her office at about the usual time this
morning, a little before eight. I wouldn’t try to read too much into the
different routine. It’s not really unusual if you walk to work, especially if
this guy she’s bedding is the putz he appears to be and sticks her with doing
all the errands.”

Hildebrandt’s dilemma was typical. The best way to bypass
the attorney-client privilege block thrown up by the law firm was if he first
produced sufficiently compelling evidence of criminal activity. But the best
way to acquire the evidence was to bypass the attorney-client privilege. There
was no guarantee; he’d been warned that circuit courts in these parts were
particularly queasy about approving privacy invasions of their local attorneys.
The FBI agent’s first request for wiretapping the lawyer had been based on
circumstantial evidence, obtained incidental to the Cleveland tail he had put
on the CLI executive and his Chinese girlfriend. There was the credit card used
at the Port of Duluth by a supposed American citizen, for whom—Hildebrandt had
slightly illegally confirmed—the IRS had no record of having ever filed a tax
return. The combination of these things had driven the U.S. district attorney
ballistic, responding to Special Agent Hildebrandt in no uncertain terms,
Not
over my dead fucking body!
and even then,
Not
this
fucking
office!
and finally suggesting that the FBI were the ones at risk of being
indicted.

“You counted how many newsstand customers?” Hildebrandt
asked.

Brophy read from the surveillance log sheets. “In the next
five minutes there were twenty-three. Seven were Asian, another five could have
been Middle Easterners. Ten might have been Paul Devinn in disguise, not
counting the women. By the way, the newsie’s merchant license and so forth all
check out. He’s a naturalized Turkish-American, been here twelve years, had a
civil infrac’ with a landlord and another involving a blow-up at his daughter’s
high school.” Brophy looked up from the sheets. “We’re still checking out other
guests who accompanied Bloch and her boyfriend to the Manhattan party last
weekend. That’s going to take some time.

“Truth is it might take a day or a month before we clear
the letter-perfect hurdle for that wiretap. Maybe we ought to just take a swipe
at the district attorney with what we got here.”

Hildebrandt studied the photograph of Christina Bloch
stuffing the magazine into her bag. “You think he might go for it?”

“Well, yeah. If not for the fact we were bugging a lawyer,
I’ve seen him spring for a Title III with a lot less than what we have here.”

SOL BERNSTEIN WAVED HIS
VISITOR
in from behind his desk without getting up. “Sorry for the
wait,” the owner of the Baltimore Ravens apologized before returning the phone
to his ear.

The office was as plush and extravagant as any Stuart had
ever seen. Two wide-screen televisions, a full-length bar, and dozens upon
dozens of trophies adorned the room. Several over-stuffed leather sofas and
chairs were positioned along a glass wall with a view of the entire
stadium—Stuart saw in the distance a large upended dump-truck in the middle of
the field, surrounded by dirt and construction workers with shovels. There on
Bernstein’s desk, beside a pile of papers, was the business card that Stuart
had handed the press agent an hour ago. Bernstein, appearing extraordinarily
fit and tan, gestured for him to sit down.

Bernstein hung up the phone. “I’ve had more nuts rolling in
out’a the woodwork for the past couple days. This last bunch I turned away were
from some crazy crop circle cult or something.” Bernstein shook his head. He
calmly sized up Stuart from beneath a bushy set of eyebrows. “You don’t look
like a nut.”

Stuart smiled. “You’re very kind.”

Bernstein laughed. “You think you might be able to solve
this riddle?”

Stuart had given a good deal of thought as to how he would
answer that question. On the one hand, the mysterious Internet riddles he had
received revealed by themselves nothing about the classified work they were
doing at CLI. On the other hand, if a connection could be made between it and
the strange activity here at the stadium, Bernstein and others might
understandably make it their business to pry into what CLI was up to, the
certain result being to unleash the wrath of the government upon the company. CLI
had no obligation to reveal anything, of course. They could always quash
publicity with an appropriately worded disavowal, when and if the time arose.

“I don’t know what to think,” Stuart began. “The truth is
that I had to make a trip, and decided to stop in because it happened to be
convenient.” He leaned forward. “But a day or so before this unfortunate event
of yours, I did receive a very unusual message. The nature of the message
strongly suggested that whoever had sent it knew in advance what was gong to
happen to your stadium.” Stuart described the image in the e-mail message,
leaving out specific wording of the riddle, deeming it actually more
insinuating than Bernstein needed to know.

“That sounds like something the authorities here might be
interested in seeing.”

“They might, but I need to be up front with you. Some of
our work is government classified. I think the best approach is for me to first
sniff around to see if it’s worth anyone’s while.”

Bernstein was unmoved. “So what can I do for you, Mr.
Stuart?”

“Mind if I go down and have a look?”

“Why not,” Bernstein shrugged. “I want to see myself how
they’re coming along.”

By the time Stuart approached with Bernstein by his side,
much of the excavation was nearly filled in with several fresh loads of
concrete. Fortunately, one section of the earthen scar appeared to be
relatively undisturbed. The first thing that struck Stuart was how uniform the
depth and overall proportions appeared. It was as if somebody had painstakingly
carved out a ton of earth with the precision of a surgical knife, except it
certainly wasn’t a knife that had done this...Stuart felt a knot form in his
stomach.

The excavation was four to five inches deep, and where it
hadn’t already been backfilled, the sides and bottom appeared peculiarly
smooth. Even the corners were cut with sharp definition. At various locations
around the edge, pieces of crushed stone had been dislodged by people venturing
close with their feet; Bernstein indicated that various investigators from
around the country had already been there gathering evidence. Stuart knelt
beside an undisturbed section several feet long. It was difficult to envision
any sort of shovel or heavy equipment being capable of something like this. Bernstein
watched over his shoulder as he removed the pen from his pocket and placed it
against the side of the shallow pit. Whatever method had been employed for
removing the earth, it had not been trained on the ground from an angle, as
might have been done, say, from the upper row of the bleachers. To Stuart’s
eye, the pen was standing perfectly vertical.

“What do you see?” Bernstein asked.

Stuart stood up. “I’m not sure.”

At that, Bernstein saw something more interesting and
walked over to the construction crew. A moment later Stuart heard him loudly
complain,
“That goddamn truck is fucking up my playing surface!”

Stuart used his pen this time to work loose a rock the size
of a shot glass from the bottom of the excavation. He studied it for a moment,
and then dropped it into his coat pocket. A few feet away—he stood about even
with the center of the stadium field—Stuart found something else.

“Mind if I take this?” Stuart asked Bernstein a few minutes
later.

“What the hell is it?”

“I think it’s a piece of your turf.”

“What are you going to—ah shit, take it. Hey!” Bernstein
shouted at the top of his lungs to the driver of the truck. “I said there’s
drainage pipes under there you imbecile!”

EMILY HAD THOUGHT SHE
STRUCK
a positive rapport with her new associates, including even
Francois Rousseau. She understood that the technical opinions of a newcomer
would be met with the normal degree of skepticism. Today, Rousseau eyed Emily’s
notations with the first signs of grudging respect. This was important;
Rousseau directed the French contingent, responsible for fully a third of the
code being generated at CLI.

The prematurely balding man quietly studied the lines of
code transcribed to the smart board from the printout piled in heaps on the
floor. There was no pressure that Rousseau appear to do this particularly
quickly; at her suggestion, the two of them were alone. Emily had dropped all
the necessary hints to make clear her indifference to whomever claimed credit
for the improvements.
Why does this have to be so infuriating?

Rousseau pursed his lips and generated little clicking
noises between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He shook his head, stretched
his legs beneath the conference table and gazed at the board on the wall. Frowning
deeply, he began a slow thoughtful nod. “There is another, profoundly
interesting aspect to this, however, which I—”

Thackeray burst open the door to the conference room,
interrupting Rousseau. For a moment he stood wordlessly eyeing them, winded,
his chest rising and falling. He said to Emily, “Stu’s back. They want us in
Perry’s office.”

Emily took her own work seriously. “Did Mr. Stuart say what
it was about?”

“Nope.”

“Francois and I will be through in just a few minutes.”

Thackeray looked at Rousseau, and then back at her. “You’d
better come now.”

Perry greeted them in his conference room with something of
a scowl. “Please close the door.”

Joanne Lewis was seated beside Steven Reedy. Emily’s eyes
met Stuart’s as she and Thack took up seats amidst the air of an argument
interrupted. Figuring she would know soon enough, Emily didn’t bother asking
what the rock and turf mat were doing in the middle of the table.