Razing Beijing: A Thriller (45 page)

McBurney pointed out that they had no idea as to the
sequence of those events. “And the father’s a physicist, daughter’s an
engineer. These careers tend to run in families. That probably increases the
odds a bit.”

“Any intelligence officer worth his salt realizes no
cover-up attempt is ever guaranteed to work. They would have had to consider
our potential interpretation of those odds beforehand. And yet, they decided to
proceed with it.”

“Or the connection may have simply been an oversight. They
run a disjointed sort of bureaucracy in their intelligence community, after
all. I’m still not sure I see your point.”

“What if the note and photos are disinformation meant to
draw our attention to the sabotage?”

“You mean as a diversion?”

Director Burns nodded. “I suppose that’s one possibility.”

A minute of silent contemplation elapsed.

McBurney finally shook his head. “I can’t envision State
Security staging any diversion which has the potential of implicating
themselves in an act of war. We’re talking real hell to pay at the very least,
a significant loss of life to avenge...they’d be averse to that. I could see
Beijing trying to implicate somebody else, if in fact a diversion is what they
intended, or somebody trying to implicate Beijing—that’s also a possibility we
should not overlook. On the other hand, given the involvement of Zhao, my hunch
is that coincidence and maybe a lack of discipline were the cause. With
succession on tap, there’s a good bit of confusion over there these days.”

“Which brings us to the subject of motive. Anything special
about this aircraft they were testing?”

“Yeah, it’s very fuel efficient. Word is airlines are
clamoring for it, or were before it fell out of the sky, that is.”

Burns bit into his cigar.

McBurney scowled. “I suppose a connection could be drawn to
China’s hoarding of Middle East oil, insofar as it follows the general pattern
of denying the United States energy independence. Proving that would take a
hell of a lot more intelligence...what?” He realized his boss was staring at
him incredulously.

“You’re bullshitting me,” said Burns.

McBurney shook his head. “No, sir.”

“This is preposterous! Sam, you’re about to get very busy.”

“I thought I already was.”

“I presume you’ve contacted the FBI about this Chang woman
coming forward with this?”

McBurney didn’t respond.

“Sam. They’re conducting this Thanatech investigation. We
have to tell them something, don’t we?”

While usually averse to sharing his cards with the FBI,
McBurney was nowadays repulsed by the idea unless a few questions unrelated to
the present topic could be answered. “I suppose so, if we expect to get any of
their help.”

“Then what’s your problem?”

“I’m not sure I want to do or say anything the FBI might
use to call the dogs off their principal suspect,” McBurney said in a rather
poor attempt to establish some wiggle room. “Speaking of whom, Ross and I each
think Emily Chang betrayed affection for this guy. Stuart might be a key player
in whatever ant hill the FBI are hoping to kick open.”

“You think this Stuart is actually Emily Chang’s handler?”

McBurney didn’t know what to make of Stuart. “The FBI apparently
consider him central to their investigation. I just don’t think there’s much to
be gained by sharing this information right now.” He described what he knew of
the investigation that the Richmond field office was spearheading at the behest
of the Cleveland FBI agent. “Meanwhile, Stuart and Chang are working some
quirky non-military R&D, which doesn’t seem to relate to anything. At first
I was intrigued to hear the company was involved in satellite business. Carolyn
Ross found this only amounted to providing credit card and telecom services,
that sort of thing. Really not techie enough to whet China’s appetite.”

“What’s the company called?”

“CLI—Coherent Light Inc. Most of their business involves
laser components for surgical and industrial use, some high-tech military
optics. Stuart actually co-founded the place.”

“Money?”

“I guess he has plenty. It would not surprise me if an IRS
audit isn’t mysteriously triggered.”

They discussed one obvious flaw in connecting Beijing to
events through the current set of players: with the exception of Emily Chang,
none were Chinese. Stuart himself didn’t really fit the foreign intelligence
profile by being well-educated, wealthy, Caucasian, a single parent. In
descending order of preference, Chinese intelligence organs tended to recruit
as spies Chinese citizens residing in the U.S., immigrants to the U.S.,
naturalized citizens, and least preferably, latter-generation ethnic Chinese.

Burns said, “Find some way to proceed other than misleading
the Bureau folks, will you? Good God, the FBI director will scream bloody
murder if he finds we’re meddling in his investigation. Seems we also have an
obligation to inform the company whose plane was blown out of the
sky—discreetly, of course. They’ll have to be dissuaded from making public
statements until we know what’s going on.”

McBurney felt a bit awkward raising his next point. “What
about the woman’s request that we extricate her father from prison?”

The DCI studied him. “What about it?”

“I guess we’ve already taken our best shot.”

“I guess. Look, Sam. Leave the humanitarian gestures to
Amnesty International. If I were you, right now I’d work on getting to the
bottom of why the Chinese might’ve taken down that goddamn airplane.” Burns pushed
himself up from his desk and crossed the room to his black mahogany sideboard. “Would
you like a cigar? Brandy, whiskey?”

McBurney was mildly surprised. He politely declined.

Director Burns returned rolling a fresh Churchill between
his forefinger and thumb. The Director settled back into his chair. His
expression became grave. “For a little over a year, the President has been
conducting secret negotiations with Beijing. The deal is, or was supposed to
be, that China use their growing clout with OPEC and get them to back off the
embargo against the United States.” Burns paused to roll the end of the cigar
through the flame of his lighter. “In return, President Denis would convince
Congress to water down missile defense, delay it, whatever. Last I knew, the
President was hoping to extract several concessions. He wanted Beijing to
curtail nuclear weapons production, and give their unequivocal assurance to
terminate transfer of weapons technology to ‘rogue’ countries, but shit,
they’ve already signed up for those things. Takes real balls, if you think
about it. China was demanding as a minimum that we
not
deploy SBIRS Low
coverage over East Asia.”

“Taiwan,” McBurney observed.

“Of course. And that we deploy on the American continent
only to the extent such defenses are effective against a ‘rogue’ or accidental
missile launch. With respect to their strategic interests, they want to restore
the ABM Treaty, status quo ante, or something like it. I guess Denis expects
that to be his legacy-crowning accomplishment.”

“I’m afraid to ask, but exactly who in Beijing?”

Burns grinned. “Wouldn’t make sense to negotiate with
people you didn’t expect to be in power, would it?”

McBurney closed his eyes. “Rong’s people.”

“The vice premier himself, actually. Remember his visit
here in the spring?”

“
Quanxi
with Rong... No doubt that’s part of Rong’s
political calculus to capture power.”

“Neither of these men are dummies.”

McBurney reflected on the opinion of Rotger, their Beijing ‘deputy
ambassador,’ that Rong Peng was front-runner for succession. “I presume that Rotger
has had a hand in these negotiations?”

Director Burns regarded him for a moment, puffing his
cigar. “You might recall President Denis being intrigued with your revelation
of our having a deep asset over there. I later found out his chief of staff contacted
Rotger and asked that we employ SIREN for getting an inside track on Rong’s
negotiating posture.”

“SIREN was already dead, or soon to be.”

“In any event, the whole negotiation appears to be falling
apart. You see, President Denis’s goal all along has been to restore some
semblance of a revving U.S. economy by getting OPEC to turn their tankers
westward again. He was keeping his talks secret, of course, so as not to
alienate his powerful environmental constituents. I think you briefing them on
China’s ‘entrenched hoarding of oil,’ or however it was Herman put it, must have
really shaken ’em up into thinking that Rong is stringing them along. I mean, how
else could Denis interpret China’s huge spending on refinery and storage, other
than they are hunkering down? Then last week—” Burns shook his head and
chuckled. “With only a couple of weeks to go, Congress sends out mixed signals
on its commitment to our national missile defense.”

“But the President is opposed to it.”

“He opposes it, all right. But NMD is his whole damn
bargaining chip with Rong. He needs it alive in order to kill it.”

McBurney struggled to not verbally assault the man who’d
appointed Lester Burns to head the CIA. “The Japanese might not like that. They’ve
helped us develop it.”

Burns puffed his cigar.

“Who’s to say cold feet on the Hill isn’t just the
President asserting his influence, holding up his end of the deal with Rong?”

“You can bet Beijing will piece the story together,” Burns
said. Everyone understood that China was able to navigate Washington politics
as well as anyone. “If they conclude President Denis had nothing to do with
Congress waffling, they certainly won’t bother cutting a deal, especially with
someone whose re-election bid is far from secure. Anyway, you can begin to see
why you took it on the chin the other day in the Cabinet Room. With the
implications of China being involved in this fuel-efficient aircraft sabotage,
you ought to know what might have motivated them. I don’t need to remind you
the classification of all this.”

McBurney knew that the Chinese would be implacable
negotiators with so much at stake. As stipulated in a treaty ratified by both
Washington and Taipei, the United States was legally bound to be drawn into any
conflict between Taiwan and the mainland—with potentially rapid escalation to
nuclear stand-off. “I didn’t think the President and NSA were exactly the
picture of confidence. When was their agreement with Beijing supposed to be
consummated?”

“Well, that final SBIRS deployment is scheduled to launch in
a matter of weeks—pending final appropriation, that is. And the arrival of oil?
I suppose in time to pump life into the economy before the election.” Burns
paused to draw life into the flame of his cigar. “But it ain’t gonna’ happen,
not if Congress unwittingly plucks the President’s bargaining chip.

“And I’d suggest not breathing a word of this aircraft
sabotage to the White House until we can back it up. The President may well
decide to hold it over their heads. Until we can advise him how he should
interpret it, there’s no telling how he would
interpret it.”

Thursday, June 11

“THANKS FOR AGREEING TO
STOP
by this morning, Mr. Stuart,” the FBI agent announced with a slight
southern drawl. His amicable smile was matched by that of the younger woman
seated to his left.

Stuart lifted his hands slightly from his knees. “I really don’t
know what more I can add. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name...?”

“Special Agent Ed Hildebrandt.”

“As I told Miss Carter last time, I’d like to help apprehend
Sean Thompson’s murderer however I can.”

Hildebrandt referred to the notes in his spiral-bound
notebook, which he kept tilted in his lap so that Stuart couldn’t see them. A
series of telephone calls several days earlier between Langley and the FBI’s
Washington Metro, Cleveland, and Richmond offices led to the grudging admission
that despite continuous surveillance, a court-ordered wiretap, inquiries into
the subject’s personal and professional background including those of his
acquaintances and past dating partners, his travel history, hobbies, vices,
medical records, expenditures, debts, tax returns, video and literary
preferences, the very clean file on Robert Stuart remained very clean. At CIA’s
urging, the decision was made to turn up the heat.

“Mr. Stuart, how would you describe your relationship with
Paul Devinn?” Hildebrandt lifted his eyes after turning a page and, along with
his partner, looked closely for Stuart’s response.

Stuart arched his eyebrows.

“You do know him, don’t you?”

“I’ve known him since college, we both attended Georgia
Tech. Paul was a fraternity guy, while I was not, but the student community was
fairly close knit. I had heard that he’s missing. You think Devinn had
something to do with Thompson’s murder?”

“May I ask how you happened to know of his disappearance? The
Canadian authorities haven’t publicly announced it.”

Stuart wondered why a missing person’s bulletin of some
sort would not have been issued. “I heard through a phone call with his
secretary at Thanatech.”

“You initiated the call?”

Stuart frowned. “Actually, I think she called to see if I
might have heard from Paul myself.”

Hildebrandt scribbled a notation in his notebook.

“Do you mind telling me what’s going on?”

Agent Carter responded, “I regret to inform you that the
Royal Mounted Police presume Paul Devinn to be dead. His overturned fishing
boat was found washed ashore after a storm. His cabin and other belongings
apparently indicated that he’d intended to return.”