Razing Beijing: A Thriller (55 page)

“Well, oil pipes and No Dong missiles are made of steel. If
either were on that freighter in any quantity we’d have squared with it. Sorry,
Gooey. We even did a second Aries fly-over. Don’t see where this could’ve gone
wrong.”

The captain stared sympathetically at his Australian guest.

Scianni asked, “How many actual missile crates were there
supposed to be?”

“Six.”

“So, sixty tons maybe, two-thirds of that propellant,
assuming propellant’s aboard...twenty ferrous tons? Six No Dong missile
casings, rocket engines and shipping containers would definitely square with
the magnetometer measurements. We can only account for maybe a little over half
that.”

Gooey cradled his face in his hands. Besides needing a
shave he had a splitting headache. More than anything he just needed to sleep.
Goddamn...
no
sense showing the Yanks the Namp’o photos again. Was the information phony,
after all? “What about communications intercepts?”

“A few,” Captain McCardle acknowledged. “She is heading to
Bandar e Abbas.”

“What about that Chinese sub hanging around? Can’t be
bananas on that freighter they were interested in.”

“You know, Gooey, you may have something there,” Scianni
said. “Bananas are rich in iron, they’re heavy, and the EP-3 wouldn’t measure
them.”

Gooey ignored the intelligence officer’s ill-timed humor.
On
the other hand, maybe...

Gooey slipped the pen from Scianni’s shirt pocket, and
scribbled out some numbers—he banged his fist on the table. “Damn, Scianni,
you’re not as bleed’n dumb as you think! There’s missiles on that tub, all right—
aluminum
missiles
.” Gooey spun the paper around to reveal his calculation.

The grin fell away from Scianni’s face, along with
most of the color.

*     *     *

“SO, THEN, I THINK
everyone
would agree that any possibility their missiles are constructed of aluminum
poses a serious threat,” McBurney emphasized in highlighting an Australian
intelligence officer’s analysis, now the basis of a full re-evaluation of
Iran’s ability to strike from afar.

A visibly tense President of the United States and his National
Security Adviser acknowledged little as they studied satellite photographs of
the Iranian port. These clearly depicted five long, narrow crates dockside to
the berth of a North Korean freighter. A sixth was suspended in the air as it
was being unloaded by a crane.

Biding their time in the Situation Room were the
Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defense, whose passing
interest in the present exchange reflected the President’s grudging
acknowledgement of what had to be done.

“This appears to put a level of technical sophistication
into Iranian hands that we hadn’t expected for years,” McBurney continued, “certainly
not until well after our deployment of missile defense.”

Herman threw him a look and continued to peruse the photos.

“Overcoming the engineering and manufacturing obstacles of
a light-weight aluminum launch vehicle is the generally accepted threshold to a
viable intercontinental delivery capability,” CIA Director Burns more
explicitly explained. “Their present Shahab can lob a warhead into Istanbul. If
this is indeed a Taepo Dong-3, in Tehran’s hands it puts all of Western Europe
and portions of the continental United States into play. It’s bad enough news
that North Korea possesses it.”

“Nobody knows what the new Taepo Dong really is,” the
President’s national security advisor correctly reminded them.

“Look at it this way. Their fizzler a few years back
splashed down several hundred miles northeast of Hawaii. How much are you
willing to bet against them now?”

Discovery of the North Korean dictator’s latest gambit had
allowed Tom Herman to pretty much dictate CIA priorities for the past twenty-four
hours. Exhausted, running on adrenaline, McBurney continued with the body of
his briefing. “Iran’s original Shahab was reverse engineered from the No Dong, by
the way. We’ve estimated the base configuration, two-stage Taepo Dong-2 payload
in the 1.5 ton class, large enough for an early generation nuke reentry
vehicle. The silo-launched liquid-propellant missile has a four-engine cluster
first stage, the second a single rocket motor—these nozzles are what you see in
photographs provided by Australian Secret Intelligence. A
three
-stage
configuration could conceivably deliver a similar payload up to 15,000
kilometers and put all of North America in jeopardy. We were able to
corroborate the Australian data, by the way. A re-examination of our overhead
imagery shows shipping containers enroute by rail—”

“Why re-examination?” Herman lifted his eyes from a
photograph.

“What?”

“You said re-examination, and so I’m wondering why you
chose to stick the prefix ‘re’ onto the word ‘examination’ ?”

McBurney realized he should expect no less from Herman. “I don’t—”

“Tom, you rightly brought up earlier the lack of a telltale
static engine test,” Director Burns intervened with a change of subject. “These
countries have a knack for clustering existing engines that have already been
adequately tested. That is, adequately enough to demonstrate for
us
that
they might actually work when called upon.”

While Herman pondered the Director’s point, McBurney
explained other incriminating evidence, including an alert by one informant in
June of 2004. Pyongyang had apparently purchased ingots of an aerospace-grade
aluminum alloy from a Russian supplier. Among its other applications, the alloy
in question could be used to produce long-range missiles. “We were unable to
confirm that it actually shipped,” McBurney said, “and neither could—”

The President’s fist slamming on the table brought silence
to the Situation Room. He leveled his finger. “We bully and try to dominate the
world with missile defense, other countries proceed to ignore international law.
What the hell do we expect?”

McBurney surveyed the other faces around the table. He had
been part of presidential briefings to discuss Korea selling missiles way back
during the first Clinton administration.

“Mr. McBurney, aren’t you a member of the JCTF?” President
Denis asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t we suspect Iran is behind our domestic terrorist
attacks?”

McBurney glanced at the DCI. “We don’t have actual proof—”

“Hence my choice of the word ‘suspect.’ ”

“It’s true that some people believe Iran is complicit. Even
so, with the possible exception of the pipeline attack, we’ve not been able to
establish an Iranian link.”

Denis sighed.

Director Burns eyed the President. “We don’t know how many
horses have already left the barn with this. That goes for nuclear warheads, as
well.”

Denis only frowned.

Nobody was in the mood to rehash the miserable dearth of
clarity on the Pakistani above ground test two years earlier in the Indian
Ocean. Director Burns assured the President that as DCI, he was personally and
directly wired into the effort to penetrate the Iranian nuclear program.

“A multitude of countries frequent the Gulf of Oman,” Herman
observed. “Isn’t this a matter for the U.N. Security Council?”

The question drew a chuckle from Defense Secretary Erskine
Daley. “That would certainly solve the question of our sending the additional
carrier group. We can choose to do nothing without the help of the Security
Council.”

“Iran will insist that it’s only oil pipeline supplies, to
which some people will claim we’re bullies throwing our weight around.” Director
Burns blinked when he realized he’d mocked the President’s words. “There is a
precedent for dealing with such a dilemma.”

The President eyed his CIA director. “That was 1962 and
eighty miles off our coastline. Kennedy had the entire hemisphere on his side.”

“We can convince Arab countries that it’s not exactly in
their interest to have the United States target ICBM’s on their region, which
we’ll be compelled to do if Iran is given free reign.

“Any chance we could talk Australia into a role?” Herman
suggested. “They found the missiles. Maybe let them take the lead.”

For the second time that morning, the Situation Room was
silent.

Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs Marcia Fuller cleared her
throat. She reiterated her view that the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman
represent a choke point readily controlled by a single carrier group.

President Denis threw up his hand. “I want something to be
perfectly clear:
no mines
. They’re evil enough on land, they’re worse
bobbing around in the ocean. Civilized nations don’t go around randomly sinking
each other’s ships.”

“Yes, very good, sir—no mines. I would recommend that we
plan to deploy the
Kitty Hawk
carrier group to join
Stennis
already in the Gulf.” She indicated the need to include logistics support out
of Diego Garcia.

“Where is
Kitty Hawk
?” Denis asked.

“Presently with the Seventh Fleet, Yokosuka.”

“I assume we will be equipped to deal with any aggressive
sort of response by the Iranians?”

“Correct, sir.”

Thomas Herman caught the President’s eye and shook his
head.

Denis ignored the gesture and said to his secretary of
state, “Walter, you handle the UN Ambassador and secretary general on this. I
want an open line between—wait, I’ll inform the British and Israeli prime
ministers on what to expect.”

Secretary of State Laynas said, “The consul general is
going to say that Iran may well interpret this as tantamount to an act of war.”

Denis agreed. “Remember, they are the ones being caught
with their pants down. All I intend to do is expose them to the world.”

HIS DECISION HAD CERTAINLY
been worth the investment of another few hours. Stacked on the table
beside Deng’s elbow were editions of
The Asian Wall Street Journal,
business
sections of
The New York Times
and
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
,
along with
Air Transport
and several other aerospace trade publications.
Deng finished chronicling the previous thirty-six months with the dog-eared
magazine open before him, a 6 April issue of
Aviation Week & Space
Technology
. He was tempted to tear out the page but there was really no
need; he already had everything he needed to know. To compile all of the
articles, or to search for yet another, would only serve to procrastinate. The
ironclad wisdom he yearned for was not to be found in newsprint, or anywhere
else.

Rubbing his eyes, Deng looked up from the wooden refectory
table. A dozen rows of table lamps illuminated the somber faces of a hundred
bureaucrats poring over Western periodicals. Barred from the masses, there were
no materials removed from this library; no hushed conversation competed with
the occasional hum of a copy machine. So low was regard for the security and
information ministries to competently address their needs that every ministry
took part in the task, duplicating efforts of the government organs whose job
it was to electronically sift through open sources for relevant information. Deng
himself had spent untold hours in the dreary repository of every conceivable
newspaper, magazine, and trade journal. From within this room he had monitored
the efforts of his contemporaries, enterprising men who freely and foolishly
publicized the state of their latest technology, if not quite explicitly then
enough so that a determined mind found much to deduce.

Deng gazed at the bored expressions and wondered what sort
of backward system denied individuals free and open use of the Internet,
compelling them instead to manually search through paper which bore the same
information. According to his blasphemous son, the free-flow of information
that fueled democracy everywhere posed an irreconcilable threat to the Party’s
methods—their typical contradiction, Peifu would say, in that the Party
encouraged pursuit of technical careers among its people yet discouraged
dissemination of information age technologies. Well, perhaps. The funny thing,
Deng realized as he thought about it, was that he actually preferred scanning
the pages of paper.

Deng closed the aviation journal, and as he studied the
glossy cover photograph of a jet engine on static test, his hands began to
tremble.

LATER IN THE DAY,
Deng
ignored the stares as he walked through the corridors of Beijing University. Stopping
twice to ask directions, he was finally directed past doors, behind which could
be heard a voice lecturing over a cacophony of instruments, to the office of
the assistant professor of musical art. Finding the door locked, he gently
rapped twice. Students walked slowly past, stares lingering, wondering at the
national figure in their midst. He was beginning to think there was no one
inside when, balling his fist, he knocked loudly and the door swung open to
reveal the flushed face of an attractive young woman. She cast him a fleeting
glance before brushing past and disappearing down the hall.

Inside the surprisingly small office, Assistant Professor
Deng Peifu sat behind his desk with arms folded. Two other students in the room
gathered up their papers and books.

“Sorry to interrupt your studies,” said Deng. He felt
awkward and more than a bit old.

“We were just finishing up.” The professor dismissed his
students. The senior Deng closed the door behind their exit.

He turned and smiled at his son. “I would have thought
you’d want to introduce me.” He glanced around at the Spartan surroundings. Hanging
beside the room’s only window was an impressionist watercolor of the Beijing
skyline; on the desk was a framed photograph of Peifu smiling among an
entourage of student musicians. Beside his desk was a table supported by four
stacks of books with a computer terminal and laser printer.