Syren's Song (18 page)

“Someone trying to destabilize the country? We've seen that before.”

“Yeah, but what would any of those three have to gain? Whoever it was knew about the attacks in advance—knew the Tigers were going to need a lot of weapons for a full-scale civil war. You don't just make and deliver that many weapons overnight.” Stark turned to Warren. “Hey, Jay, let's go get what we
came for.” Warren took one last look down the main trail and started walking toward the large cave.

“What did you come for, old man?” Golzari asked Stark.

“A good look around. We're trying to find the Sea Tigers' base.”

“You think it's here?”

“We had a UAV up last night that saw a mine fire. I figured it was enough out of the ordinary to check out,” Stark said.

“Your hunch proved right.”

“It would have helped if you hadn't killed them all, Golzari. We might have been able to get some information.”

“I'll try to be a poorer shot next time.”

Stark and Golzari joined Warren, and the three walked toward the mine entrance. Melanie remained where she was, deep in thought and quietly recording the activities in the plaza. Stark looked back at the trailhead from time to time.

“Huh,” Warren said aloud as he inspected the work area and the mine entrance. The overturned wheelbarrows, hammers, and piles of broken rock confirmed that the ore had been mined inside the cave, brought through this entrance in wheelbarrows, and then broken up with hammers. The monks had probably been forced to do the heavy work with picks while the children had separated the metal from the rock with hammers.

“What do you think?” Stark asked Warren.

“I think it's good that you brought me, boss,” he said with his hands on his hips. “This is new.”

“What's new?” Golzari asked.

“The mine. The whole operation. Look at the entrance and the wood they used for supports. You use better-quality structures if you've been working on a mine for years. I'd say this one is maybe a year or so old,” he said as he felt the hewn rock around the opening. “But why go to all this trouble for zirconium? And then why throw it away? Look at this,” he said, showing them some fragments from the pile of discarded rocks. “It's full of zirconium.”

“What if it wasn't zirconium they were looking for?” Golzari asked.

“But what else would they . . . aw, shit,” Warren said. He quickly pulled off his pack and dug through it to get at a piece of equipment. Like a child finding a toy, he flourished a gray box with a display panel and a probe connected to it by a wire. He carried it to the work area, and the display came alive when he passed the probe over the ore. It did when he scanned the mine entrance
as well. “Gamma fucking rays. This is why I couldn't get the right readings in Trincomalee with the EMP,” the scientist said.

“Hafnium?” Golzari said.

Warren froze. “Yeah, how did you know?”

“An educated guess based on a conversation I had a few days ago with a retired scientist, one of Admiral Rickover's Vulcans. I asked him about zirconium, and he mentioned that it sometimes occurs in combination with hafnium.”

“Yeah, Admiral Rickover's guys spent a while trying to find a way to use this,” Warren said.

“Jay, how about condensing this for the rest of us?” Stark interjected as Melanie drew closer to the group.

“Sure, sure. Hafnium is a rare earth element usually found with zirconium. About fifty years ago Admiral Rickover's outfit started playing with it because of its potential for high-explosive weapons.”

“Like atomic bombs?” Stark asked.

“No, not quite on that scale. But pretty darn close.”

“So why didn't it happen?”

“According to the scientist I spoke with,” Golzari interjected, “they needed pure hafnium, but no lode was known to exist.”

“Yeah, that's right,” Jay said. “So they scrapped the program. There's only one problem.”

“What's that, Jay?” Stark asked.

“I think there
is
a pure lode of hafnium. And it's in this mine.”

“How much is here?”

“I'd need more time and a better look to tell you that. Most likely specks of dust with a few nuggets interspersed. They'd have to sift through a lot of earth to get enough to be useful.”

Stark grimaced. “Not a problem if you have slave labor.”

Hong Kong

The Mercedes-Benz pulled off Wharf Road on the north side of Hong Kong Island, and the driver stopped in front of one of the city's newest high-rises. The bodyguard exited the S-class sedan first and greeted one of the two security officers stationed at the entrance. The bodyguard adjusted his suit coat then stood by the door.

Tao Hu picked up his briefcase and leaned over to kiss his wife. She reminded him not to be late to their younger son's concert that evening. He gently pointed out that he had never missed any of their children's performances.

She smiled and touched his hand. “I didn't say you would miss the concert, my dear, only not to be late,” she said.

He smiled broadly. After all these years she knew how precise he was in his use of words. That precision had helped him throughout his career negotiating deals. It worked less well with his wife. He tapped twice on the window, and the bodyguard immediately opened his door. After Hu exited, the bodyguard closed the door and the car pulled away.

When the car was out of sight, Hu took out a pack of Benson & Hedges cigarettes, tapped the pack against his forearm until one slipped out, then turned to the bodyguard, who already had a cigarette lighter ready. “I promised her she would never
see
me smoke again,” he said. The bodyguard chuckled. Hu allowed himself to enjoy half the cigarette because they were early for the meeting. Then he and his bodyguard entered the building, crossed the ten-story atrium with its nine-story waterfall, and walked to the elevator. The bodyguard made sure the elevator was empty and then, after Hu entered, pushed back a couple of businessmen hoping to get on as well. The elevator took them smoothly to the thirtieth floor at five hundred feet per minute.

The doors opened to reveal a spacious marble lobby with mirrored walls that made it appear to be quadruple its actual size. The receptionist and other employees in the lobby stood when they saw Hu and remained standing until he passed. He recognized them with a quick nod as he made his way to the conference room. The floor-to-ceiling windows that formed one side of the room offered a breathtaking view of Hong Kong harbor and Kowloon, where glass buildings reflected the rays of the risen sun.

The nine board members and chief financial officer of Zheng Research & Development were already seated at the oblong onyx table. Hu shook their hands one by one as he made his way to the end of the long table. Most of them had coffee or tea, and a few had elected to try the croissants made by the firm's French chef. Hu believed that food relaxed people. As for himself, he attended so many meetings that he had found this luxury to be a necessity. His executive assistant was making last-minute adjustments to the papers before them as Hu took his seat.

Sitting in chairs against one wall were three of Hu's top staff—his chief scientist, his chief of security, and his corporate information officer, an innocuous
title for intelligence chief. The latter two were Westerners. The burly chief of security had served with the Russian navy for twenty years. The slender, blonde intelligence chief was an American—or at least had been an American. She had done more to advance his company—and China—in the past eight years than many of his scientists. But success always came with a price.

Hu began the meeting when the chairman of the board looked imperiously at him from across the table. The CFO spent the first half hour discussing the firm's revenue and expenses along with projections. When a board member asked a question about the large spike in the out-years, the chairman replied that Hu would give a full report on that after the financial report. Ten minutes later the CFO closed his folder and deferred to the firm's president.

Tao Hu slid back his chair and called up a map of Sri Lanka. He motioned to his executive assistant to pass a black box around the table. The velvet-lined box contained a dull silver nugget of metal about the size of a raisin. “Gentlemen,” he said as the box was making its way around the table, “the contents of that box will pave the way for that spike in revenue along with placing China ahead of every other nation in the world in terms of first-strike weapons. This small piece of hafnium—pure hafnium—in your hands is more than anyone outside our operation has ever seen. In fact, few people even know that pure hafnium exists.”

He asked his chief scientist to explain hafnium's properties and how it might be weaponized. When he concluded, Hu continued his briefing.

“As you know, we have many projects around the world, and many eyes and ears. One of those came to fruition eighteen months ago with a young Sri Lankan scientist. He was educated in Beijing, and we supported his research with money, transportation, and assistants. That research has produced stunning results. Almost as important, this young man is a close friend of a man who was a mid-level leader of the Tamil Tigers during their civil war.”

“And this is the insurgent who is leading the new civil war, Tao?” the chairman asked.

“Yes. We provided him with a shipment of weapons a few months ago. The cost of the weapons is a pittance compared to what we expect to receive in return,” Hu said as he tapped his finger on the onyx table and smiled. “With the weapons we gave them the Tamils gained control of the lode of hafnium in northern Sri Lanka.”

“How are you ensuring that this mineral will come to us?” another board member asked.

“Yes, and what happens if the Americans learn that pure hafnium exists?” asked another.

“Is that how the insurgents took out the Sri Lankan navy?” came another voice.

The chairman's voice overrode all of the others. “Tao, this firm must not fail as it did with the oil platforms off Yemen.”

Hu's smile faded at this reminder of his only failed project. “Gentlemen, I assure you that while the extraction process is largely in the hands of the Tamil Tigers, it is we who control the hafnium. Due to operational security, I'm not at liberty to discuss the details.” This was technically true, but he simply didn't want to tell them. The board meeting broke up, and Hu's executive assistant closed the lid of the box and returned it to his office.

Hu held back his chief of security and intelligence chief until all the board members had left. “What of the American agent asking questions,” Tao Hu said to the Russian.

“He was too fast for the team in Singapore. For the American operation, it was easier to subcontract the hit to one of the Mexican cartels,” the burly man responded in a rich baritone voice.

“Easier, perhaps, but did it work?”

“Apparently not,” the Russian said dryly. “He was last seen boarding a flight to Chennai.”

“We picked him up there,” the intelligence chief said. “An American destroyer was in port by coincidence,” she added. “We believe he boarded that ship.”

Hu thought about this for a moment. “Forget him for now. Even if he got to Sri Lanka, he wouldn't have the means to find Gala. No, let's focus on the operation in Mullaitivu. Once they've extracted and processed the ore for us, we can deal with the American agent.” He dismissed them and stood by the window to admire the view, secure in the knowledge that the material for this new EMP weapon would provide him with a needed boost up the next step of his career ladder.

Mount Iranamadu

Melanie wrote in her moleskin notebook while Golzari walked the perimeter and Jay wandered among the caves that had been the monks' quarters. Stark looked out at the water in the distance and tried to unwind. Dusk was approaching, and a few fishing boats meandered offshore. He wondered if one of them might be a wolf in sheep's clothing—or in this case a Tiger in sheep's clothing. It was time to get moving. The four of them were deep in enemy
territory, and it was just a matter of time before more Tigers came to the site. This was the source of their power, literally and figuratively.

Stark knew that his hunch to come to the mine had paid off. If they were going to find the Sea Tigers' base, this was the only immediately available clue. The mine was clearly crucial for their weapon making, but there was no facility here to process the ore or to build the rockets. The material was being taken to another spot where the weapons were manufactured. He had seen no evidence that they used the trail he and the others had followed to reach the monastery. And as far as he knew, the Tigers lacked the ability to transport the ore by air.

The other trailhead was the key. Beyond the wheelbarrows were large backpacks. One of the murdered monks had been wearing one. Stark opened the backpack and sifted his hand through the chunks of ore it contained. This was a primitive operation. Everything was carried from the mine to the processing facility. How far was it? How far could aging monks carry tons of earth?

“Think I got something,” Jay said as he approached Stark. “There's a pretty large cave. Normally a mine entrance will have a shack for equipment, the supervisor, and paperwork. They were using the cave for that. Probably less noticeable from the air.” Warren handed him a stack of papers.

“Great. I can't read Sinhalese or Tamil,” he pointed out.

“I have an app for translations. I read through a few of them. They're essentially accounting records. That ship we took?
Asity
? It's listed here. You were right that it was carrying mining equipment here. They used some other ships as well.”

“Then they're not just using small boats, they've got an entire logistics network. But they have to keep it hidden from the Sri Lankan government,” Stark said. He used Jay's translator to find the names of shipping companies and ports of entry and departure. The departure ports were scattered throughout Asia, but he saw no ports of entry in Sri Lanka. Most of the times recorded in the papers were in the evening. After allowing Melanie to photograph the papers Stark told Warren to put them in his pack. Then he thought about what he had learned.
How would the Tigers get large freighters close enough inshore to offload their supplies without being noticed? They probably do it at night. A ship could easily make it into Sri Lankan territorial waters at night, transfer the supplies, and then be back over the horizon by daylight
. Stark decided he had to see where the other trail led.