Razing Beijing: A Thriller (43 page)

Emily ignored him as she eased her foot from the brake
pedal and allowed the Toyota to creep toward the shoulder. For this she was
rewarded the extended middle finger of the angry man’s hand. Emily floored the
accelerator and her car leapt forward, clearing the pick-up in front of her by
inches, wheels spinning and gathering speed. Both men held up their hands
demanding she stop, their faces twisted angrily and mouthing obscenities before
finally jumping aside. Emily heard something strike the roof of her car as she
raced toward the off-ramp.

MCBURNEY WAS HIMSELF
SPITTING
bullets about the very same traffic as he stood waiting, late
for his first meeting. An obese woman in her fifties was slowly providing a
young Air Force lieutenant with a non-escort visitor’s badge and directions
from Langley’s interior security entrance.

McBurney passed his badge through the reader. While glancing
at the clock overhead, already concocting his apologies, the guard blurted his
name.

“You the same McBurney that Caroline Ross works for?” the
woman asked.

McBurney stepped up to her kiosk and presented his badge. With
no apparent explanation forthcoming, he said, “I’m already late.”

“I guess so. Ms. Ross has been waiting with your visitor in
the reception lounge.”

“My visitor?”

“A civilian woman and
not
pre-approved. Next time,
make sure you schedule your visitor in advance.”

“Where are they?”

The woman gave McBurney a quick up-and-down glance. She
pointed a two-inch lacquered fingernail to direct him toward the bay of visitor
lounges, where personnel conducted business with individuals otherwise
restricted from the interior compound. “They put her in three.”

“Does the visitor have a name?” Certainly they had run the
cursory check on the visitor’s social security number.

“I would think so.”

Shaking his head, McBurney walked the short corridor off
the main lobby toward Lounge No. 3. Through the small glass window in the door,
seated on the sofa beside Caroline Ross, the profile of a young woman with long
dark hair touched off a vague recognition. Unaware of the pent-up emotions
awaiting him, McBurney pushed open the door and entered the room.

Eyes red and welling with tears, Emily Chang glared at him.

McBurney’s eyes landed on Ross, who said, “Sam, I tried to
get hold of you.”

McBurney took a hesitant step forward. “Miss Chang?”

“Because of the CIA, my father is now in
prison
. My
mother...my mother is either barely clinging to life or already dead.”

“What are we talking about here?”

“I think you know. Just please tell me that you didn’t
already know you had failed my parents while you were in Cleveland, grilling me
with your FBI friend.” Emily closed her eyes momentarily and took a deep
breath. “My given Chinese name is Zhao Lu-Chang. Does the name Zhao mean
anything to you?”

McBurney was speechless. How could they have overlooked the
existence of a defection candidate’s daughter, especially one living in the
States? He remembered reading the physicist Zhao’s file; there was no mention
of any children. Something didn’t connect.

He sat down on the sofa opposite the women and clasped his
hands. “Maybe you should begin by explaining what it is you believe happened.”

Emily shot McBurney a disdainful look. During the
ensuing silence, her lower lip quivering, her eyes flickered over the manila
envelope there on the coffee table...

“WELL?”
McBurney
asked Caroline Ross in a hushed tone.

Ross cast a concerned look through the window. Inside, Emily
Chang sat staring at the floor and fingering the lobby badge clipped to her
blouse. “I get the impression she hasn’t slept for awhile. We need to
understand why she thinks that, by coming here, she risked signing her father’s
death warrant.”

“Sounds like a big price to pay just to come in here and
dump on us.” McBurney felt a sinking sensation; Chang’s father aside, how did
one apologize for failing somebody’s innocent old mother?

“Standard practice requires that a prospective defector
understand the importance of not mentioning their preparations to loved ones,”
Ross reminded him. “If he hasn’t acknowledged having a daughter, I would doubt
she has much if any idea what her father was working on.”

McBurney rubbed his chin. “Bits that reveal more of her
father’s activities will dribble out during a formal debriefing. But maybe not.
The FBI claim she’s persona non grata back home in China.”

McBurney accompanied Ross through the door into the small
lounge. They seated themselves across from Emily.

“Miss Chang, why did you feel that you had to illegally
smuggle your parents into the country?” McBurney asked. “Did you consider
approaching our government for—”

“Humanitarian assistance? Political asylum? As soon as they
found out that my father was a prominent physicist employed by the Chinese
government, they’d have led me to the door. How could I know they wouldn’t then
alert someone at the Chinese embassy, who’ve repeatedly denied my requests? If
I did get them here through such channels, your government would only have
caved under diplomatic pressure and deported them back.”

“But if it was your mother who was sick, your father need
not have traveled abroad.”

“They were always very in love, Mr. McBurney. Neither would
ever consider leaving the other. My mother’s treatment in Pittsburgh was to
have taken months, if not longer.”

“Maybe you can understand that we have to be very
cautious,” Ross explained softly. “Before we acknowledge that certain
activities did or did not occur, there’s a minimum amount of verification to be
made. Is there anything you can offer as proof of your account—anything to help
us protect the identities of people such as your parents?”

Emily reached with shaking hands to unclasp the envelope in
her possession. She slid the contents out onto the table. Clipped to the top of
the thin stack was a note with a few short, hand-written columns of Chinese
characters.

McBurney immediately recognized the precise date and time
of the defection attempt at Chek Lap Kok. Chang placed the note aside and began
unclipping other pages in the stack.

“May I?” he asked, reaching for the note.

Emily at first seemed surprised, then nodded. “When we met
in Cleveland I sensed that you’d been to China before.”

McBurney exchanged a look with Ross.

Emily said to him, “Much of this information I obtained
from the snakeheads.”

McBurney proceeded to read that Emily’s mother was believed
to have died of liver failure and complications arising from and shortly after
her arrest. Her physical whereabouts remained unknown; her father was believed
to have undergone psychological torture before finally divulging how and why he
had attempted escape through Hong Kong; and Chinese authorities believed ‘a
source within Beijing coordinated with CIA.’

Beijing knew the existence of agent SIREN?
The note
revealed information that neither stations Hong Kong nor Beijing had been able
to provide him, not the least being the current state of Zhao and his wife. McBurney
realized that the smugglers Chang had hired must have had access to a mole
inside the gulag, perhaps a prison guard or a doctor.

“You were threatened with blackmail?” Caroline Ross asked
with genuine surprise, looking up from one of the documents.

“Yes, but how could I have known that my mother might be already
dead, my father in prison?”

Ross looked at McBurney. “This clearly suggests somebody
sabotaged Thanatechnology’s flight test.”

McBurney saw nothing to gain by acknowledging to Emily that
they and the FBI had already suspected sabotage. “Do you have any idea why?” he
asked Emily.

Chang shook her head.

“Is Thanatechnology aware of this?”

Tears streaming down her cheeks, Emily Chang explained that
rather than actually destroy the incriminating evidence, as the anonymous
letter instructed, she had managed to hide it. Caroline Ross rounded the table,
sat beside the distraught woman, and tried to console her.

McBurney rose from the sofa and stood by the door as the
women quietly talked. The implication that SIREN may have been compromised had
very broad implications, not least among them the nature of the agent’s own
death. After several minutes, McBurney returned to sit beside Caroline Ross as
she suggested Emily spend the night at a nearby hotel.

This Emily refused. “I have just begun a new job. I do not
want to miss any more work than I already have.”

“Then, would you mind if we had some experts analyze the
contents of this envelope?” Ross asked. “They might be able to tell us certain
things. For instance, where and when these photos were taken. And maybe who it
was that put together this note.”

Emily looked at her uncertainly.

“I assure you we’ll give them back when we’re through.”

“You may borrow them, yes,” Emily said weakly.

Caroline Ross said softly, “You need to believe that no one
here who may have been involved in this affair would mean your parents harm. I
say that knowing full well the many contradictory things you’ve probably heard
about the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Emily’s eyes wandered between the veteran spy and his
apprentice. McBurney was reminded how difficult to read he had found her
demeanor. “I know that,” Emily admitted with a nod.

“The situation must have put you under tremendous
pressure,” Caroline continued. “Under such circumstances, I think most
individuals would want to reach out for help. Is there anyone else you’ve
discussed these events with?”

“Not...entirely.”

“Would you please explain what you mean?”

“The plan to smuggle my parents into the country I
discussed with only my cousin.” Emily averted her eyes toward the floor. “I
discussed the sabotage, and its many implications, with Mr. Stuart where I work.”

McBurney and Ross exchanged glances—
Stuart again.
They
also noted that Emily was blushing.

“I seem to recall that Mr. Stuart worked with you at Thanatech,”
McBurney said. “May I ask when, roughly, you first discussed these developments
with him?”

Chang tilted her head, thinking. “It was shortly after Sean
Thompson was murdered.”

McBurney remembered FBI Special Agent Hildebrandt saying
that Stuart had been questioned regarding the Thanatech murder and placed under
surveillance. Yet, if Chang was telling the truth, then Stuart had withheld
information from Agent Hildebrandt.

“I would like to ask you a question,” Emily informed them.

McBurney saw evidence of the steely resolve return to her
eyes, something he had witnessed during their chat near the Thanatechnology
plant.

Emily eyed him with an intensity bordering on hatred. “How
do you plan to rescue my father?”

LIKE THE RECURRING HIP
PAIN
that warned him on a sunny day of the approach of a storm, Deng
Zhen felt a vague unhappiness. Why he should feel this way, while surrounded by
family in the warmth of their kitchen, was difficult to know.

Deng Zhen’s earliest childhood memories were of sitting
upon his own grandfather’s knee, watching his family play mahjong. Many years
before the Great Famine had rendered his grandfather a wheezing skeleton, the
old man used to bounce his knee up and down and hug him so hard as to nearly
crush him, grabbing him by the nose between two knuckles, causing his mother to
laugh and his sister to cry for attention. Such long-forgotten images were
lately intruding on his thoughts...and
that
, Deng understood, was the
source of his discontent. Burned into memory was the kitchen table of his own
childhood, its surface worn smooth by decades of scuffing elbows and hands—a
symbol of life and laughter, sustenance and love, an image now and forever
charred and broken among the scattered ruins with the rest of his childhood
home. The last he had seen of his sister she was barely alive, suffering
bravely, fighting a battle she would eventually lose—the victim of
beasts,
mere children by any traditional measure, but children enlisted en masse to a
campaign of hatred and butchery.
Where are you now—you who live every day
knowing you clubbed into pulp the feet of your neighbor, or cheered while your
teacher’s internal organs splashed over the ground?

Deng watched his grandson trace his fingers over the
twisting grain in the heavy oak tabletop. He turned toward his daughter-in-law.
“Guangmei, would you be so kind as to take Ping to the study for his
calligraphy lesson tonight?”

Peifu glanced at his wife. “I can take him, Father.”

“That’s not what I asked.” His tone even caused Ping to
stop fiddling and stare up at him. “That is, if Guangmei doesn’t mind.”

His daughter-in-law dried her hands on the sides of her
corduroy jeans. “Of course not, Papa.”

The two men sat alone at the old oak table, son warily
regarding father, who realized Peifu was probably expecting some sort of
rebuke. “Tell me, do you ever see yourself becoming a contented man?” Deng
gently asked.

Peifu looked at his father. “If this is about Yiren living
in his own flat—”

Deng held up his hand. “I’m perfectly satisfied with the
living arrangements of both my sons. What I’d like to know is, over the years
you’ve expressed dissatisfaction with my, well, professional endeavors.” Deng
wasn’t sure if he sufficiently understated the subject of such endless acrimony.
“You seem content with your academia, and content you should be, despite my
criticisms, if indeed you are confident with your choice. However, have you
ever seriously debated...in your mind, that is...have you asked yourself, Will
I, Peifu, make a difference that will improve the lives of my children?”