Razing Beijing: A Thriller (53 page)

“Except?”

“Except the composition of the target will always play a
role. On that, we have no control. Do we?”

Deng was unsure what the scientist was driving at.

“What I mean to say, you and I have no control over what
the devils ultimately do with the power we are preparing to deliver them.”

Deng was more than a little taken back by Zhao’s candor. The
kindly physicist’s hands were shaking in anger.

Dr. Zhao flinched under Deng’s stare and looked away. “I
suppose it’s a little late to be pondering that.”

Deng remained silent for several moments. “We were worried
about you. To whom do I convey my thanks?”

“I will be happy to pass on your appreciation.”

“At least allow me to know where to refer people in need of
similar care. You will not be the last man too young to suffer a stroke. For
that matter, I am not getting any younger myself.”

Zhao held his eyes downcast.

“We failed in our efforts to reach you even through your
wife. Is everything okay with Meiling?”

“I am sorry, Commissioner. You had best direct all such
questions to Deputy Security Minister Chen.”

Beijing, China

DENG ZHEN AWOKE WITH A
START
to find that he wasn’t alone. He sat up groggily and fumbled for
the lamp on his bed stand. Peifu held a finger to his lips—Deng’s son looked as
if he had lost a fight with a kick-boxer. His left eye was severely swollen. Blood
from an open gash above his temple matted down spikes of sweaty hair.

Peifu pressed a scrap of paper into his father’s hand.

Relieved that the unexplained wounds appeared superficial,
Deng glared disapprovingly before slipping on his reading glasses. The clock on
the bed stand ticked to 4:37
A.M.
as he
glanced at the note which read, ‘Police may be coming. Need to talk.’

Deng swung his feet to the floor. He whispered, “Clean
yourself up and meet me in the kitchen.”

Twenty minutes later, Deng sat on a bench in the park not
far from their home, biting his tongue as he listened to his bruised young
music professor recount feats of utterly brazen stupidity. Apparently Peifu and
his cohorts had been chased on foot throughout half of the city, hiding in
alleys and behind courtyard walls, before circling home.

“Police beat you up, and yet you were able to get away? I
suppose that’s progress.” Deng almost chuckled, until the improbability of such
a near brush had a moment to sink in.

“They were PLA troopers, not the Armed Police.”

More improbable yet, Deng thought with deepening confusion.
“What about the others?”

Peifu breathed a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. One of the
women was trying to keep up with me. I heard her scream when she was grabbed
from behind and driven to the ground. Last I knew they were clubbing her on the
back, in her stomach. They dragged her away by her hair like a rag doll—no,
like a sack of garbage...
fucking
bastards.”

Deng was all too familiar with the technique, whereby those
arrested would be beaten all the way to the detention center. Neither their
families nor the sham lawyers brought in to represent them would be able to
detect much in the way of physical abuse. But the internal injuries would be
skillfully inflicted, ensuring permanent disability.
You came very close
this time, son.
“You stubborn, arrogant fools. What did you expect by going
back to the same meeting place? You knew of the arrests last week. The ministry
would have cracked them by the following morning.”

“We are not so stupid. We have structured our organization
according to strict secrecy policies.” Peifu inspected the wash rag that he had
been using to staunch his bleeding. “None of the students captured last week
have any idea who we are, and certainly no idea where the leadership council
meets. We never directly met or spoke to any of them.”

“So the police are clairvoyant?”

“Our communications are conducted over the Net.”

“So what? The Internet is impervious?”

“The one we use is nearly so. We have these...secure
servers.”

“Secure is a relative term. How do you mean?”

“I am not privy to the details, only that the servers are
hidden and not registered with the Information Ministry. We acquired encryption
software on the black-market, with which we encode all of the messages.”

“Uh-huh. And these postings all over the city, these logos
you have fashioned indicate that you must have access to printing resources. Such
contacts, and the money to pay them, represent opportunities for State
Security. You can hide behind your computer screens all you wish, but if there
is a weaker link elsewhere in your network it will do you no good. There is
that clever Westernism, I forget who coined it, that three people can keep a
secret so long as two of them die.”

Deng watched Peifu stare into the night. The first gray
hint of sunrise revealed clouds rolling low over the city. “Interesting you should
mention death.” Peifu’s voice was tired, the adrenaline rush giving way to a
restorative fatigue of the body’s defenses. “America is a country which exists
today only because there were people who weighed their lives against freedom,
the same freedom we—”

“Damn your freedom! You haven’t the luxury of rebellion,
not with a family to care for. What about your son?”

“What about my son’s
future
? Once succession gives
way to stability, your grandson will be trapped in dictatorship for another
generation, perhaps longer.”

“A handful of fringe zealots will only make things worse
for everyone.”

Peifu turned toward his father. “So you think we are only a
handful?”

“It does not matter. The Hundred Names have come to accept
democracy as an over-rated, discredited style of governing. The pro-democracy
movement died in 1989.”

“You are wrong. It is stronger than ever, more resilient.”

They watched a curfew patrol car drive slowly past a
distant street bordering the park, the typical perfunctory show after spending
the night with their mistresses. The car turned and disappeared between the old
Buddhist temple and High School No. 7.

Deng pushed himself up from the bench. “You keep this up,
we will find out just how resilient. Unless of course State Security manages to
crush the will of your colleagues, in which case we find out
very
soon,
indeed.”

“They may crush us, but never our will.”

Deng stood looking down at his son’s battered face, fearful
of what Peifu had brought on himself. He feared most of all that Peifu meant
what he said.

BOTH DENG AND SECURITY
Deputy
Minister Chen Ruihan were too embarrassed for eye contact as a rhythmic creaking
noise carried over the moist air, pungent with the odor of chlorine and mildew.
Something could be heard scraping its way across the tile floor, the sound punctuated
by a soft feminine whimper...

Deng finally had heard enough. “
Wo mingtian huilai,
”
he growled at Chen as he rose to leave the soggy antechamber. “When Rong finds
he can pry himself away from his priorities, that is.”

“If you please, comrade,” said Rong’s bodyguard without
raising his eyes from the pages of a magazine. “The vice chairman will be only another
moment.”

A splash in the pool a few minutes later announced that the
moment had come and gone.

The bodyguard smiled. “Vice Chairman Rong will see you
now.”

Inside what was still officially known as Mao’s Swimming
Pool, exotic flowering plants dangling from the cavernous skylight invoked the
image of a luxurious resort. Deng glimpsed the naked form of a young teenage
girl walking hurriedly off, wet hair clinging to the middle of her back, spare
hips and buttocks swaying tightly. Clutching a towel to her chest, she cast a
distressed glance over her shoulder before disappearing through a doorway on
the opposite side of the pool.

Rong Peng hauled himself up the steps of a swimming pool
ladder and met his two guests at a circle of teakwood furniture arranged
poolside. Deng noted that the man contending to become China’s next core leader
kept himself in exceptionally robust physical shape for a man in his fifties—a
fact that their interruption of his indulgent virility was probably meant to
convey.

Rong meticulously wiped himself dry with a towel before
donning a cotton robe. He sat opposite his guests, crossed his legs, and said
to Deng, “I am concerned that we are about to be overtaken by the Americans.”

Deng allowed himself a deep breath. He had feared the curt
summons from the number two commander-in-chief might be a precursor to
devastating news of a more personal nature. Perhaps his son’s sense of
invincibility was not so misplaced after all.

“Something is troubling you as well, Commissioner?”

“The engineers are actually making good progress,” Deng
said. “It is down to essentially a computer reprogramming exercise. Since Dr.
Zhao’s miraculous reappearance, modifying the American program has proceeded
well. You may have heard that he is back on his feet.”

“When should we expect a successful demonstration?”

“As early as a week, probably ten days.”

“Ten days?”

“I approved the plan this morning. Assuming the trials
check out, the final uplink will then be performed on the orbiting vehicle. In
ten days we could be in position to attempt a demonstration.”

“And there will be no more delays? We have been here before.”

“I would be lying to say with certainty that there will be
no more delays.”

“We are no longer in the realm of research, Comrade
Commissioner.”

“I am aware of that.”

Rong reached for a pack of 555 brand cigarettes on the
lounge table. “Fourth Line is grossly behind schedule. But I did not drag you
here to harp and complain. On the contrary, you are to be commended for your
profoundly visionary undertaking on behalf of the Chinese people.”

“Thank you.”

Rong tapped a cigarette loose. “As an admitted imbecile
when it comes to technical matters, I like to think of your organization as a
great distillery of knowledge. The ingredients consist of all modern
science—some Chinese, some provided to you with the help of people like Chen
here. You patiently refine the process, year after year, until the valuable
distillate meets our ever-shifting political needs. Like a distillery, would
you agree?”

“A novel description.”

“None of us dreamed you would not experience occasional
delay. However,” the powerful Vice Chairman of Military Affairs lit his
cigarette, “we are simply out of time.”

“It does not help that we cannot say exactly when the
Americans will fully deploy their missile defenses,” Chen added.

“But if we are lucky, technocracy is the same everywhere,”
said Rong. “And I think we have managed to minimize that particular schedule
uncertainty. Nevertheless, you may have heard rumors, Commissioner, that the
American government is experiencing a lack of testosterone. It would be foolish
for you or anyone under your charge to place faith in these rumors, to view
them as a potential source of reprieve.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Deng replied
honestly.

Rong seemed captivated by the possibility that that could
be so. He leaned forward. “Schedule is everything now. Should the American’s
space-borne missile defense elements possess anti-satellite capability, and
they deploy first, you will be facing twenty years of work down the drain.”

Having already had this explained to me for the
millionth time...
Deng cleared his throat. “No doubt the American infra-red
detection satellites will provide a level of ASAT capability—but what they
cannot see, they cannot attack.” Their own, Chinese satellite was specifically
designed with such ASAT defense and detection in mind. “Rather than bore you
with technical details, I need only point out our intelligence briefings. I
trust you have received them. Our stealth provisions seem so far to be
operating effectively. If they were not, the Americans with their advanced
reconnaissance tools would have, by now, detected the satellite in orbit.”

Deng wondered why he was having so much difficulty making
himself clear. “It seems that whenever I provide this explanation, it only
serves to cast doubt upon my commitment to schedule. This could not be further
from fact. Events in the United States or elsewhere have no bearing on our
commitment to schedule.”

“There is also the issue of intelligence assets,” Chen
Ruihan pointed out. “The longer we must hang onto these as a contingent source
of technical product, the more we risk their exposure.”

Rong asked Chen, “Are you aware of any specific risks?”

“None recently. The FBI had begun to investigate an
apparent security breech within the teleportation consortium. Fortunately, other
matters intervened before surveillance and any arrests could be made. The
investigation was dropped.”

An attendant appeared carrying a silver tray of fresh fruit
and a decanter of carbonated water. The man poured them each a glass before
promptly leaving.

Rong rose from his chair and walked to the glass wall
overlooking Zhonghai Lake. “What are your plans for the future, Commissioner? Once
your dream becomes a reality.”

Deng chuckled. “My personal ambitions are of interest to you?”

“Certainly.” Rong turned from the window glass with a
disarming smile. “Locked inside your head is invaluable knowledge.”

“Oh, I believe it’s time to make room at the commission for
a fresh perspective. Technology is about innovation, after all.”