Razing Beijing: A Thriller (79 page)

Carolyn Ross flipped through the notes they had accumulated
over the past thirty-six hours. At length, she dropped them onto the kitchen
counter-top.

“Did he know we’d wired him?”

“The guy isn’t stupid. Aren’t too many places to bury a
wire.”

Stuart’s brief had been simple enough. Establish rapport,
deliver the assassin’s identity, extend the offer to become an operative, glean
whatever technical facts he could about the satellite weapon—in precisely that
order of priority.

In addition to denying him sleep and regular meals, their
primary tactic was to jump randomly from subject to subject, confusing any
attempt by Stuart to consistently parse his responses. There were more rigorous
techniques available to pin Stuart down. All they could really do was threaten
to use them.

It was Ross’s turn in the interrogator’s seat. “Round
four?” she asked.

“Why not.” McBurney closed the cupboard door that concealed
the various monitoring displays.

The safe house used by the Agency’s Tokyo station was
nestled in the northwestern outskirts and offered the bare minimum; three tiny
bedrooms adjoined a single bathroom, a dining salon, sitting room, and
kitchenette. There had been extensive modifications, of course. A small microwave
antenna located in the attic was directed toward a similar one atop the U.S.
embassy eight miles away. Low-density sound isolation foam had been injected
into enlarged interior wall and floor structures. Each room was fitted with
concealed listening and fiber-optic video devices; laser and infrared scanning
devices were presently trained on Stuart for monitoring his telltale biological
indicators.

Stuart eyed his inquisitors as they strolled into the room
and sat in the opposite sofa.

“This is actually pretty ridiculous,” McBurney began once
again. “You seem determined to make this difficult.”

Stuart looked away. “I volunteered for this job thinking we
Americans stuck together.”

“What did you expect, when you took it upon yourself to
tamper with national security?” McBurney asked. “A twenty-one gun salute? If I
had my druthers, I’d drag you home and try you for treason. Perhaps I will.”

“You assume that what I talked about with Deng was
treasonous.”

“Well, unless and until I understand what motivated you to
evade our surveillance, what choice do you give me?”

“I reject on basic principle your right to eavesdrop
without my permission.”

“You’re lying, and I sense you’re lying in order to somehow
play for time. But you’re really
bad
at this, Stuart. I mean, a civil liberties
passion somehow doesn’t fit your corporatist, ex-Marine profile.” McBurney
smiled. “Show me your ACLU membership card.”

Stuart rubbed his hands over his face before dropping them
to his lap. “Deng confirmed that the weapon exists. Apparently, there are more
in the works.”

“Deng confirmed a connection to the GW Bridge attack?”

Stuart eyed him with contempt. “I wouldn’t say he explicitly
confirmed it.”

“That’s inconsistent with the rest of your story.”

“I told you, I didn’t have enough time to delve into their
operational details.”

“I had warned you about the time.”

“And I’m warning
you
about the time. Forty-nine
hours, Sam—twenty-five orbits. That’s how long Deng said it takes their
satellite to re-charge before another attack.”

“We’ll keep going over this until it’s as solid a
transcript as we would’ve gotten had you not dropped the wire.”

“I’M CONVINCED SHE HAD NO
IDEA
where Stuart is,” added Devinn. “I did figure out where Stuart sent
his daughter. So...what technology do these people think was stolen, anyhow?”

“Never mind
that
,” Devinn heard Lance Lee insist. “You’ve
got a few years of corporate bureaucracy under your belt. Wouldn’t the lawyer
be involved in formulating the company’s response to intellectual property
theft?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Yet she claimed the company was doing nothing about it?”

“She said their efforts were focused on combating some
government legal maneuver to yank funding for Stuart’s project.”

“Did she indicate Stuart’s project was taking a new
direction?”

“I grilled her specifically about that. The only
redirection she seemed aware of took place some time ago as a result of
Stuart’s return to CLI.” In fact, Devinn recalled the woman had barely finished
her third confirmation of that point before her words were choked by a surge of
vomit.

Devinn heard sounds in the background that he associated
with the movement of traffic. “I’ve got a proposal that perhaps you could help
with. One thing certain to flush Stuart out would be for me to make a clean
grab of his daughter. That way—”

“You just don’t get it,” his handler interrupted. “Your
raping this woman only elevated our risk. I’m disturbed by the fact that you
appear to be driven by some sort of sick personal vendetta with Stuart. Is that
what this is?”

“She was lying to me right off the bat. I didn’t have any
choice. I got you the information you wanted, didn’t I?”

“And you really believe she won’t be able to provide any
leads?”

“So far as she’s concerned, I might as well have just
appeared on the planet. I blindfolded her. Not a chance.”

There was a long silence. “The problem isn’t where Stuart
is
.
The problem is what he and others may be directed to
do
. Forget about
the daughter. Just lay low, disappear, somewhere not far from where you are right
now. Wait for my call.” The line went dead.

Devinn swore and slammed down the payphone.

THE TRANSPORTATION
SECRETARY
glanced up from reading aloud the hastily prepared report,
thrust into his hands thirty minutes earlier. The White House Situation Room
was for him an unfamiliar venue; his audience did not typically include the
nation’s top military brass and heads of intelligence.

“So, the explosion essentially demolished the entire refinery.
Fire has consumed almost everything left behind.” William Tyson closed the
folder. “On my way over I managed to get in touch with the CEO. His folks
confirm the accounts that conditions preceding the blast created the equivalent
of a massive fuel-air bomb.” Tyson swallowed hard.

“Our Newark Office fielded a team to begin poring over what
they can find,” said FBI Director Dave Dolan, “which we’ll follow up with a
CIRG outfit.” Everyone knew they were already spread pretty thin. “They’ll
determine what type of detonation technique the terrorists used, although I
have to say the devastation they described to me over the phone sounded like a
scene from Dante’s Inferno.”

President Denis had this morning glimpsed his own vision of
hell. While hosting a Sierra Club fundraiser, his Secret Service detail had
brusquely and without explanation whisked him away from the Rose Garden and
into the subterranean presidential bunker. They quickly learned that a
geostationary SBIRS High defense satellite registered what had initially
appeared to NORAD as being a low-yield nuclear detonation on the mid-Atlantic
coast, promptly triggering a critical alert to the White House. “I imagine this
will take some time to repair,” said the President.

“Oh, it’s a total loss,” Tyson corrected him. “A new
petrochemical refinery that size, including half the tank farm that was
destroyed...you’re talking several billion dollars and a few years to bring back
on-line. It’s been forty years since such a facility was licensed and built in
North America. Perhaps if you granted the waiver of certain environmental—”

“What’s this mean for gasoline prices?” President Denis
asked, deferring Tyson’s bureaucratic tedium for others to deal with.

“Yes, uh, Woodbridge represented roughly 14% of East Coast
refining capacity—we’ve been closing down refineries in recent years. Good news
is, if you can call it that, with the current depressed oil supplies we can
probably make up the production loss elsewhere, assuming that plant’s heavy
crude process doesn’t create feedstock problems. This does leave the industry
with effectively zero margin. Whenever any of these plants has to shut down,
say, for scheduled maintenance, we’re going to see price spikes in gasoline and
heating oil, jet fuel, fertilizer—”

“Not if I cap the prices,” said the President
matter-of-factly. “Perhaps it’s time I did that.”

Tyson fingered the briefing folder. The President had been
circulating to him, the energy secretary and others, some intriguing memoranda
lately. Despite their carefully crafted words, it was clear the Denis
administration was contemplating their next step toward fully nationalizing the
country’s petroleum industry. The refinery incident would certainly increase
whatever pressure they were under regarding an energy policy.

President Denis looked to his FBI Director. “I understand
you’ve identified these men?”

“Their names are Mohammad Mousavi and Salman Ehteshari,”
Director Dolan confirmed, both of whom were already suspected of being involved
in the GW Bridge attack. “They appear to have current visas, an H-1B and a
student, issued to their aliases.” The Director briefly summarized the arrests,
citing the luck of a survivor having witnessed both suspects and a guard in a
tussle near one of the exits just moments before the alarm. Widespread grief
and anger over news of another two-hundred thirty-one casualties—following the
hundreds lost to the Hudson River—had been partially buoyed by word of the
FBI’s dual apprehension.

“There can be no doubt this was a long-term operation,” Dave
Dolan said. “One of the terrorists held a job at the security firm for over
three years. According to his employer he was a model employee. Both men are
well educated, degreed engineers.”

“When you describe them as terrorists,” Thomas Herman said,
“exactly what kind of evidence are we talking about?”

“Eyewitness accounts place these men at both attack sites—I
mean, they were apprehended in the process of fleeing the refinery. I’ve got
teams of agents dedicated to gathering more evidence. Their whereabouts since
entering the United States are being chronicled. We already think we can link
Mousavi circumstantially by way of sick leave and vacation time to other
attacks—including the Holocaust Museum.”

The President asked for an executive summary as soon as one
could be pulled together.

“Does the Attorney General agree with your assessment?” Herman
asked.

The Director cocked an eyebrow. “I really haven’t had a
chance to review it with her. This security firm thinks they can produce
evidence that the refinery service call was bogus. I guess their supervisor
claims not to have approved it. If so, that should clinch the indictments.”

President Denis grimaced. “Is this really where we are? Granted,
the case against these two is important. But doesn’t the issue of who they
represent make the issue of legality moot?”

“I don’t believe so,” Herman said. “We’re going to need to
justify before the court of the world any unilateral American response. Especially
in the case of a state-sponsored attack.”

Secretary of State Laynas reacted as if poked in the ribs. “Who
said anything about acting unilaterally?”

The President allowed his eyes to drift over his various
advisors.

Walter Laynas sensed the President’s uncertainty. “We need
to set an example of good global citizenship. If we come off as heavy-handed,
we’re liable to increase the number of terrorists who view us as a global
menace.”

“Point made,” Denis said. “Let’s not get too hung up on
that right now.”

“But the issue of evidence has already become pertinent,” Laynas
gently disagreed. “The Iranian consulate in Ottawa wants one of their
representatives to privately meet with the men taken into custody.”

The President’s eyes lit up. “How goddamn brazen. Have they
indicated why?”

“They say because we refuse to share our evidence against
them. Tehran insists that we’re conspiring to wage a campaign against Islam.”

“Really? Like, we’re staging these attacks on ourselves as
a ruse?”

“We could attempt to find out if they really believe that,
maybe have our own representative present, that is if we decide to allow it.”

“Dave?”

Dolan didn’t have a ready position. “There’s precedent with
prison detainees passing operational intelligence to visitors. I suppose the
legal downside ought to be limited. I can’t speak to the politics.”

Denis shifted his glance between his two advisors. “Then
what seems to be the problem?”

The Secretary of State responded by way of a glower toward
the FBI Director.

“Unfortunately, firemen on the scene worked these Iranian
guys over pretty hard,” Director Dolan admitted. “One of them has yet to regain
consciousness.”

“What, vigilantism? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying a few frustrated firemen took matters into
their own hands. They had just lost their colleagues to a secondary explosion.”

President Denis leveled his finger at Director Dolan. “We
cannot descend into anarchy, not on my watch. I want those
cowboys
arrested!”

“Sir, they uh...technically speaking, they were defending
themselves. If I understand, the terrorists were attempting to overpower two
men with the intent of seizing their fire-fighting attire.”

“That’s reason to bludgeon them? With the eyes of the
world community upon us?”

*     *     *

HIS CLOSEST ADVISORS
waited
as the President contemplated the various theatre engagement plans and scenario
models. It was obvious the commander-in-chief was comfortable with none of
them.