Razing Beijing: A Thriller (77 page)

“We knew we’d be cutting this close, Ralph. I don’t want to
mislead you. Legal precedent for suing the government on breach of contract
isn’t encouraging.” Of course, their exit clause guaranteed
them—eventually—financial redress by the government. Perry wanted the research
contract reinstated.

“I heard you the first two times,” Perry barked. “I’m
willing to go in there with anything. Make sure you get the DOE guy to show up.
He told me they’d support us, but dammit, I can’t get Donna Gingras to even
return my calls!”

Satchel in hand, she climbed out of the car and swung the
door shut with her knee. “Would you mind having someone else round up Campbell?
I just think my time’s better spent preparing our argument. I need to drum up a
lot of counsel before I can even start, including the other side.”

“Sure,” Perry grumbled. He asked if there was anything else
he could do.

Lewis walked the few feet to the door leading into the
house and fumbled her keys. “Meet me at the courthouse at eight Friday morning.
That’ll give you and Gil a chance to familiarize yourselves with what I
prepare. Be sure you’re conversant on security upgrades incorporated at
CLI—that will probably be important. Keep your fingers crossed. That’s about
it.”

Lewis entered her townhouse, turned on the kitchen lights—a
low groan at the sight of dishes piling up in the sink. She doused the lights
to the garage.

She had not seen the figure dressed in black as it
ducked beneath the closing garage door, cautiously avoiding the electronic eye.

WORKING THE PHONE
from
her study and moving west through the time zones, Joanne Lewis hit up three
fellow alumni living in the Chicago area, one of whom ran the legal studies
department at Northwestern University. The result was more negative prognoses. It
was after midnight by the time she finished the last of seven more calls, these
to the San Diego region and her Pepperdine alma mater.

Joanne glanced at the list of willing and not-so-willing
assistants. A good exercise tomorrow would be to rank their recommendations by
prospect. Now exhausted, she planned to hit the Library of Congress as soon as
it opened.

In her dream, the bed bowed beneath her as if she were
under the weight of some enormous creature...she tried to lift up her hand, her
arms, her legs. Nothing budged under the deadening load of this
thing...
a
dream, a harmless illusion.
Or was it?
Her pulse raced ahead, thumping
softly and steadily like a tiny helpless animal frantic in its effort to
escape. In time the dream-nightmare receded, driven away by the faint smile
that came to her lips—consciousness rising, barely there at the edge of sleep,
bringing fresh certainty that day follows night and whatever nightmarish ghouls
invade the minds of the weary, they cower in the clarity of consciousness...

All this Joanne perceived in the five seconds or so it took
her to realize that the thing on her back hadn’t floated away. By sheer will
her eyelids flickered open in the darkness. She drew in a deep rush of air to
scream—

A gloved hand pressed hard over her mouth. At the same
instant a hard object bore against the side of her head—the unmistakable sound
of a cocking pistol resonated through the sinus cavities of her skull. The
glove smelled bitterly of leather and oil. She scrunched her eyes shut tightly
and tried to scream, but managed only a squeal.

“Scream when I remove my hand,” the man said with lips
close to her ear, his voice relaxed, “and I’ll pull the trigger. Nobody will
hear it, especially not you. The decision is yours.”

Lewis opened her eyes. She was lying on her stomach and
didn’t dare move. Light coming in from the street cast his shadow against her
bed’s headboard. It seemed forever before the hand drew away from her mouth.

The man withdrew the gun from her head, and ripped the bed
sheets away. It was not so dark that his eyes couldn’t take in her nakedness. Never
in her life had Lewis felt more vulnerable than she did at the instant he began
to fondle her hair.
Oh God, he’s going to rape me.

“What do you want with me?” she asked, ashamed that her
voice sounded so weak. Then she felt the cold barrel of the gun placed between
her legs. “You sick bastard,” she managed to say.

The gun was removed. She felt the mattress deflect as the
stranger again straddled her and roughly blindfolded her eyes.

He gripped her shoulders and rolled her onto her back. “Now
sit up. You’re getting dressed. Dark clothes. Where are they?”

“Where are you—”

A sharp slap landed across her mouth.

“Ow!”
Lewis tasted blood on her lips. “
Fuck
you!”

He slapped her again.

“Oh God...my jeans are hanging in the closet. There’s a
sweater in the top drawer of my dresser.”

She heard him root through her things. Clothing landed
across her thighs.

“Quickly. Don’t make a sound or I pop you.”

“Who are you?”

“Never mind who I am. Shut up and get dressed.”

Fumbling under darkness of the blindfold, Lewis pulled the
pair of jeans up past her naked hips.

“So we’re going to play a game,” the man said after
watching her pull her pants on. “The way it works is I ask you a question. You
get one chance to answer it truthfully, and some of the answers I already know.
Now, then. Do you know a man by the name of Robert Stuart?”

Lewis felt herself stiffen. “I think—”

“One chance.”

A heavy dread welled up in her chest. “He’s at the company
where I work, a company called CLI.”

“Good. And what does he do at CLI?”

“He’s an executive.”

“I asked what he does—not what he is.”

“I’m not sure. Engineers report to him on a research
program. He runs it.”

“What kind of research?”

“I don’t know what—”

This time the slap across her face slammed her head
backward into the brass of her bed.

“I’ll make an exception,” the man said. “You can try that
one again.”

Lewis huddled her legs against her bare chest, sobbing. “It’s
a government research project, something to do with lasers and I’m a
lobbyist
,
I don’t
understand
what it is! The program’s in trouble...it’s going to
be canceled.”

There were several moments of silence. Lewis had the sense
that the stranger was considering her answer, as if maybe he hadn’t expected
it. The man’s voice was middle-aged, confident, and intelligent. Was this about
CLI, or Stuart? Lewis was scared, now she became suddenly chilled: Had
somebody—in the government—determined that
she
posed a risk to their
plans?

“Better,” the man said, breathing deeply. Something soft
landed on her lap. “Put it on.”

Lewis pulled what felt like her gray mohair turtleneck
sweater down over her head.

“Next question. Does this Stuart have any family?”

“He’s divorced,” Lewis said, “and his ex-wife is dead. She
died six months ago of lymphoma.”

“How sad. Any children?”

“No, thank God.” She clenched her teeth, probing the room
with her mind for the falling swing of his hand.

Long seconds passed before the man said simply, “Yeah,
thank God.”

The intruder had her tie back her hair in a tight pigtail,
and he gave her a thick wool cap to wear. Lewis was forced onto her stomach
again while he pulled her wrists behind her back, and then cinched them
together with plastic ties.

“Where are you taking me?”

The man plucked her off the bed by the arm, intentionally revealing
his strength. “Before I answer your questions, I still have a few of my own.” He
stuffed a stocking into her mouth and walked her shuffling and tripping down
the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the back door. The back yard’s grass
contained tiny rocks that dug into her feet, and she was disheartened by the
realization that the neighbors would all be asleep. They walked a short way in
a direction that she guessed would lead to a small park up the street. Her
heart sank further; the lights there this time of night were extinguished. No
one would see her there either.

They stopped as she heard the juggling of keys, followed by
the sound of a trunk lid popping open. The stranger gripped her by the back of
the neck and slowly steered her head down until she fell forward into the
trunk.

“Make a sound and you’re dead.” The trunk slammed shut like
the lid of a coffin.

Shivering uncontrollably, her mind fought to deny the
realization of her helplessness. The stranger climbed behind the wheel and shut
the driver’s door. He started the engine.
I’m going to die and no one will
ever find me.
Lewis rolled onto her back as the car started to move, her
scream stifled by the stocking still in her mouth. She willed herself to remain
calm, to fight back panic. Slowly, gradually, she succeeded.

I have to get out of here.
Arching her back, she frantically
probed her bound hands around in the carpeting for something—to fight back
with, or to unlatch the trunk lid?
If only I could cut the ties holding my
hands...
The car smelled new. Maybe there was a tool kit or...her fingers
came across a small square of paper. It was thick, like a business card...
oh
how totally fucking useless
. Finding something loose and unattended gave
her hope that she’d find something else. Fending off tears, she slid the card into
the back pocket of her jeans and continued to probe the carpeting with her
fingers, shifting her body to cover as much area as possible.

The whirring sound of tires and the low, guttural roar of
the speeding engine soon overcame her hopes. Wherever they were going, they
were doing it quickly.

Thursday, July 9

THE FACE BEHIND THE WHEEL
and
the double-S logo adorning the side of the company’s van were instantly
recognizable to the security guard. Yet these were increasingly dangerous
times, particularly in his line of work, so the guard carefully scanned the
morning list of visiting contractors.

Mohammad Mousavi and Salman Ehteshari had anticipated an
elevated level of scrutiny, beginning with a cross-examination as to how they
had managed to defy Parkway rush-hour traffic from Paterson to Woodbridge for
their 8:42
A.M.
arrival. The guard seemed
to ignore that particular subtlety as he flipped through the pages of his
clipboard. Having witnessed the company dispatcher phone in their service call
to the refinery’s purchasing agent, Mousavi was confident that
SecuritySolutions was included on the list.

“You guys must like it here,” the guard casually observed,
noting in his records the engineering representatives’ second service call in
as many weeks.

“Well sure,” Mousavi replied cheerfully, thinking that
several hundred people employed within the Standard Oil refinery complex would
soon most decidedly
dislike
it here. “This is where my cousins all ship
their oil to become rich.”

The guard chuckled. “Yeah, well, not so much lately they
don’t.”

“Sadly true—the fools.” Mousavi thumbed over his shoulder
toward the back of the van. “Actually, we are here on account of a defective
batch of batteries.”

The guard slid the side door open to conduct the obligatory
inspection of portable electronic equipment. Among the assorted non-threatening
items was a standard cardboard carton, the South Korean manufacturer’s label
identifying the contents as one dozen nickel-cadmium batteries. Seeing the top
open, the guard flipped aside the flap and removed one. Turning the rechargeable
pack over in his hand, he didn’t notice the dark eyes watching closely in the
rearview mirror. Had he taken a moment to dig beyond the carton’s top layer,
the guard might question why the remaining nine battery packs were all wired
together to form a powerful series circuit. As it was, there were fewer
implements than what normally accompanied the men into the plant. He replaced
the object where he had found it, slid the van’s door shut, and returned to the
guardhouse.

The man reappeared moments later carrying a small
cylindrical object, which he magnetically attached to the van’s roof over the
cab. Immediately a strobe light began flashing. “Now, you remember—”

“Not to remove the transponder,” Mousavi replied. “We
remember.”

“You’re cleared this morning for zones Twelve ‘A’ through
‘H.’ ” He handed Mousavi the color-coded map and a walkie-talkie, the accepted
means for communicating within the refinery complex, and then subjected the
visitors to the familiar tedium about obtaining clearance to additional areas
should the need arise.

Mousavi studied the pamphlet diagram with feigned
displeasure. “How do I know you are not profiling me?”

The guard looked at him, realized the humor and laughed. “Get
out’a here!” He turned toward the guardhouse and signaled with a circular
gesture of his hand. The ten-foot cyclone gate slid aside. Mousavi gunned the
engine, and with a wave to the guard, he and his partner entered the premises.

Mousavi tossed the facility map aside. Refinery personnel
paid the men inside their van little notice as they entered a chasm formed on
both sides by goliath manifolds and fractionating columns. Black-on-orange OSHA
placards warned to extinguish all sources of flame; other signs designated the
refinery zones where distillation cracked the crude oil into its various
hydrocarbon fractions.

Salman Ehteshari examined his watch. “We are nominally on
schedule.”

Mousavi appreciated the explicit time and location provided
in their instructions, precise elements around which to anchor their planning
and hone the procedures. During their three years preparing for today, such
precision had not always been the case. Plans initially were such that he and
Ehteshari would have had to prepare themselves for certain martyrdom, thanks to
several hundred kilos of exotic explosives. For reasons unknown, those plans
had evolved and now, like their contribution to the destruction of the George
Washington Bridge, the hand of some other patriot would play a critical role.