Razing Beijing: A Thriller (34 page)

Devinn removed the night-vision rifle scope from inside his
jacket—his objective tonight was surveillance. The Lexus was parked beneath the
portico and between two columns, the nearest pillar partly obscuring the rear
license plate. Moving a few yards to his right, he was able to jot down the
D.C. registration on a small notepad. Again he heard the sound of tires on
gravel. Headlights appeared and an older model pick-up truck roared up the
drive. The truck swung beneath the portico, past the parked Lexus, before
coming to a halt in front of the garage. The headlights were extinguished, the
driver’s door opened, and Stuart emerged. Devinn watched his old friend walk
casually toward the front entrance of his home, glancing at the Lexus before
going inside.

Devinn thought the attractive woman who had arrived
with the daughter was likely a child-sitter of some sort, in which case she
would soon leave. She appeared a little old to be some sort of au pair; a Lexus
with D.C. plates didn’t fit that particular profile. Stuart’s new flame? All
the above? After all, whoever heard of a rich putz averse to dipping his wick
into the family help, as his own father had repeatedly done.

STUART POKED HIS HEAD
into
the family room to find Ashley sprawled on her back on the floor, the back of
her head resting against Gordon’s stomach, quietly reading a book. She heard
him there and rolled to her side.

“Daddy, where’s Aunt Joanne?”

“She asked me to tell you that she had to leave.”

“But I wanted to say goodbye!”

“You blew it, kid.” Stuart knelt down and pecked his
daughter on the forehead. “You thanked her for driving you home, I hope?”

“Always.” Ashley resumed her reading without further
comment.

Unconvinced, Stuart slipped away to his office, eager to
hear what Emily had found.

“I didn’t get to speak directly to all of them,” Emily
informed him, disappointment in her voice. “For a few, the best I could do was
ask people here at the plant that might be able to comment. Five employees left
because their spouse was being relocated.”

Stuart struck a line through each name as she proceeded
down the list; he was surprised how quickly it went. There was nothing
particularly suspect or unusual in her findings—as best that either amateur
sleuth could discern—which included promotions for higher salary, or internal Thanatech
relocation, with one case of dismissal on a sexual harassment offense.

Stuart looked over their results. There were two remaining
unaccounted for but Stuart knew enough about them to suspect they had left for
legitimate reasons. Lay-off rumors had been circulating for some time and
salary increases were going to be zip. “It’s understandable that some people
are leaving voluntarily.”

“Now what do we do?” Emily asked. “Does this mean the
saboteur is still lurking around Thanatech?”

“I don’t know.” Stuart cleared his throat. “Listen, I heard
through the grapevine, Miss Chang, that you were considering leaving Thanatech
in order to come work for my outfit here.”

“Really? And what grapevine would that be?”

“Well, half the people on my list said so.” She had to know
he was joking with that, Stuart thought. “Is it true?”

Silence. “That depends. I actually might consider it.”

Stuart could tell she’d replied with a smile. “I have a
good idea what you already make. We’ll boost your salary by 25%.”

To his surprise, Emily’s reply sounded hesitant. “That
seems generous. Isn’t it more expensive to live in northern Virginia?”

Don’t you blow this.
“Almost forgot. The moving
allowance and sign-on bonus come to seventy-five thousand dollars.”

“What’s a sign-on bogus?”

“Bonus! Bonus!”

“Oh. And before I decide, is there anything else you ‘almost
forgot’?”

“Uh, I should inform you that it’s mostly government
contract stuff. But this is a right-to-work state and they can’t force you to
sleep on the job. Jeez, Emily, I guess you begin with a few weeks vacation...?”

“I see. And how long would I have to think about it?”

“Well, when can you start?”

MCBURNEY LOOKED AT
his
reflection in the bathroom mirror and gripped the extra twenty or so pounds of
rich restaurant food that had coagulated around his stomach. He puffed out his
barreled chest, squared his shoulders, and—there we are! Merely bad posture at
fault, allowing the flab to roll over the waist of his shorts. Gone were the
days when all he could eat went only to fueling his great bulk. Inherent to his
size was the superior physical strength he’d always enjoyed over most men, and
probably always would, but then...McBurney relaxed, and the flaccidity
reappeared. It was disgusting and cruel, he thought, what age and gravity and
constant travel had wrought. Right now he was simply tired and he just knew that
Kate wouldn’t be. He wished there were some way to turn out the bedroom lights
before parading himself in front of her. McBurney finished brushing his teeth
and snapped off the bathroom light.

Kate sat cross-legged on the bed with a book on her lap,
her dark-brown hair pulled back prettily and laying in curls in front of her
shoulder the way that he liked. She looked up from her novel as he shuffled
toward the bed. He noticed with sudden guilt the only thing she wore was the
sheer silk nightshirt he’d given her on that first weekend, the one during
which Kate had suggested they move in together.

She smiled as he approached the bed, whereupon McBurney
collapsed, facedown.

A moment later she let out a sigh. “Poor old Sam. What do
we do with you?”

McBurney groaned into the pillow; he could feel her eyes
boring into his back.

“What do I do with a man too old for his age?”

Already his grogginess was surrendering to unconsciousness.
“I’m not too old. Am I to blame for my flight getting in so damn late?”
Certainly
that had to be it
, he thought, feeling a stab of anxiety along with his
flagging libido. His flight from LA did touch down at Dulles some ninety
minutes behind schedule.

“All right.” She slapped him smartly on the butt. “Tomorrow
morning we
each
have a date.”

McBurney moaned into the pillow. “Sometimes I wonder how
hard lawyers actually work during the day.”

“Cute, Sam. And you are a miserable shit. Tomorrow
morning—six o’clock at the gym.”

“If I’m not awake, start without me. It’s midnight.”

At that, the telephone rang. McBurney started to peel
himself off from the bed.

Kate slid to the floor and jogged, half-naked, around the
foot of the bed toward the doorway. Her voice carried the short distance down
the hallway; he could tell by the pause after her greeting that the call was
intended for him. “...not at all...yes, maybe an hour ago. I can wake him...? I’d
be happy to...I’ll tell him...oh yes, we’d love to. Any time at all...I’ll make
sure that he is. Goodnight.” She hung up the phone.

McBurney watched her walk back into the room. His eyes
drifted down past her narrow hips to the dark vee between her legs. At age
thirty-three, Kate’s exercise regimen had preserved her flat stomach and
smooth, taut legs...McBurney felt himself becoming aroused. He watched her
traipse around to her nightstand, her lips parted in a knowing smile as she
climbed onto the bed.

She sat back against the headboard and stretched her legs
straight out in front of her, drumming her hands on the tops of her thighs. “That
was your boss,” she explained cheerfully. “He’s very sweet.”

“I’m not surprised you would think so. What did he want?”

“He extended an invitation to have us over for dinner
sometime. He must think for some reason that you’ll be in town. And he’d like
to meet you in the morning—early in the morning.”

“Really?” He thought Director Burns was supposed to give
the morning brief to the president and then spend the rest of the morning at
the Pentagon. “How early?”

“Five-thirty, at the Langley gymnasium.”

WHEN HE WAS ONLY
forty-six
years old, Lester Burns suffered a massive coronary attack. Nine years and one
triple by-pass later, the top CIA chief restricted himself to a low-cholesterol
diet and an exercise routine that McBurney suspected was at best a rationale
for preserving an indulgence in brandy and cigars. He found the Director of
Central Intelligence on his back benching a set of weights. The chest of his
sweatshirt was wringing wet. Director Burns greeted McBurney and wiped the
sweat from his face.

The sparkling new gym wasn’t crowded at 5:35 in the
morning. The two men set off at a slow jog around the indoor track.

McBurney had two business trips under his belt since last
speaking with the director. There were any number of issues his superior could
and should be anxious to hear, and a request to meet with him now suggested the
President was anxious as well. There was, for example, rising concern among the
international intelligence community that instability within the Chinese
Communist Party might wash over into neighboring Asian countries for a return
to the bad-old days. Pyongyang, Moscow and Beijing had long thumbed their noses
at the Missile Technology Control Regime, exchanging missile, nuclear, and
chemical weapons technologies with aspiring regional powers like Pakistan and
Iran. Most recently there was the inexplicable disappearance of China’s
military communications satellite, which McBurney had raised as a dire omen of
further Asian mischief—and as a pretense for his subsequently botched defection
attempt, the result being a divestiture of the President’s political capital. He
had learned on the sly that attendees to National Security Council gatherings
had taken to cynically mocking him, referring to ‘MIST’ for ‘McBurney’s
Imaginary Satellite Theory.’ He could also expect Director Burns to lecture him
this morning on the importance of deferring travel in order to focus more attention
on Joint Counter-terrorism Task Force proceedings.

Burns looked straight ahead as he jogged. “So, how’s your
new budget coming together?”

McBurney replied between breaths: “A thing of beauty.”

“You’re aware of the pipeline attack?”

“Yes, sir.” It was impossible not to be. McBurney’s flight
from Los Angeles was boarding when the Sierra News Network broke the story,
announcing with shrill horror that a major spill had occurred when a corroded
section of the old Trans Alaska Pipeline failed in an ecologically sensitive
region. Minutes later the Interior Department released their own statement,
confirming that TAP operations in Valdez had indeed registered a pressure drop
in a segment between Fairbanks and the Tanana River. The same report claimed
that, although the shutdown command immediately triggered gate valves to close
and pump-drive turbines to disengage, an eight-hundred mile, 1.5 million ton
python of pressurized oil barreling over the tundra cannot be stopped on a
dime. By the time it was over, a sloppy 13,000-barrel spill had occurred. Investigators
working to ensure the safety of personnel entering the area hampered clean-up
efforts, further raising the ire of environmentalists.

Burns said, “I understand your mystery terrorist group
called in again.”

“Free Palestine?” The group claiming responsibility for a
handful of domestic attacks seemed not to have affiliations with any previously
known terrorist groups—in which allied intelligence agencies enjoyed some level
of infiltration—thus hampering Task Force efforts to locate members.

“And they finally left a finger-print,” Burns announced. “FBI
recovered some shards embedded in the tundra from what appear to be remnants of
a shape-charge backing plate used in the building demolition trade. Bureau’s
already traced one to its theft from a site last year.”

McBurney seemed to recall that the demolition devices were
serialized. It also seemed to him that any serious criminal wanting to cover
his tracks would consider that possibility, if in fact they weren’t already
aware of it. “Stolen from where?”

“Ankara.”

Recent years had witnessed the unfortunate incursion into
Turkey of the militant Islamic extremism that was hampering economic
development throughout the Caspian region. McBurney sensed Burns was looking to
him, as the Agency Task Force representative, to swing into action now that he
was armed with this nugget. “I wonder if Mossad could provide us a lead.”

“Already have. Nahman Weir called me almost right away.” Director
Burns was known to enjoy as solid a personal rapport with the Mossad general
director as ever existed between the two intelligence leaderships. “They’ve had
similar pipeline attacks. He wanted to know where over here to funnel
everything they knew. I told him you were assigned to the president’s task
force.”

McBurney felt the football injury in his right knee
beginning to stab. So the job in Alaska had broad implications.

“Before I forget, Weir took the opportunity to remind me
they would still like our file on Ahmadi.”

“I already gave them everything we have. He wants what the
FBI refuses to hand over to me, which I’ve learned include surveillance details
of Ahmadi’s visit to the Senate Russell building.”

Burns didn’t respond.

“Do you remember?”

“Oh I remember, all right. Last night I received an
unofficial heads-up call from a friend at the
Post
. The significance
isn’t clear but I think it’s got to do with your Senator Milner blackmail
threat.”

“Somebody’s taken it public?”

“Sounds like it. He was vague on details and wouldn’t
reveal the identity of his source, naturally. I haven’t finished going through
the Early Bird yet but you ought to pick up today’s copy of the
Post
. The
gist of it is, somebody leaked that a senator was threatened in an attempt to
alter the legislative landscape.”