Razing Beijing: A Thriller (97 page)

Hildebrandt pointed at the corpse. “Then fill me in on what
this is about.”

McBurney undid the top two buttons of his shirt. “We have
reason to believe certain technology pioneered by CLI was stolen by a foreign
government.”

“That’s not exactly news. The Bureau investigated espionage
here months ago.”

“It appears to have been used to develop a very effective
weapon.”

“That may be national security, it’s also espionage. What
kind of weapon?”

McBurney blinked. “We’re well beyond the point of espionage
here. Apparently this thing’s already being aimed at the United States.”

“ ‘Apparently?’ You Langley types need to have enough sand
to stick your necks out. What kind of weapon?”

McBurney lowered his gaze.

“Oh—you don’t think I’m smart enough to understand.”

“No, I don’t think I’m smart enough to explain it.”

The grinding wail of the fire alarm startled both men. They
bolted for the door and nearly toppled Agent Brophy heading the opposite way.

Brophy was pale. “Perry’s secretary described a lawyer that
was just here. This guy fits Thackeray’s description of Paul Devinn.”

Hildebrandt swore.

“It’s worse. That alarm? The woman says she can’t be
certain the guy ever left the building. Mr. Stuart seems to think he might actually
be downstairs.”

Hildebrandt said, “Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves.” He
closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Nick, find out if Gail
Carter’s night goggle man this morning, Miller I think, remembers spotting a
silencer on the end of Devinn’s handgun.”

The junior agent pulled out his cell phone to comply.

Resting his hand on Linda Potter’s sob-wracked shoulder, it
appeared to Stuart that his plans were falling apart. While the FBI struggled
for direction, he weighed the idea of having Linda page Emily and Thackeray
back upstairs to the lobby. But what if he happened to inadvertently lure them
into Devinn?

Stuart pulled Hildebrandt and McBurney aside. “We don’t
have time to screw around,” he said. “If anything happens to those two
downstairs, a lot more people could die. We have
got
to get ourselves
down there.”

“Mr. Stuart, the FBI does not train its agents to respond
like cowboys,” Hildebrandt pointed out. “Whatever else you might’ve thought
this was, it is now a homicide investigation. I cannot allow you or anyone else
to interfere.” Curious employees were now pouring from their offices into the
lobby on their way outdoors. “Devinn has probably bugged out. Either way, you
my friend are out of it. Especially as it would otherwise mean endangering
yourself and other folks. This is an armed criminal.”

“That’s precisely why we need your help. You hear that
alarm?” Stuart explained that the building code required all security access
doors to deactivate in the event of a fire, and remain so until re-armed by the
responding fire marshal. “It’s possible Devinn coerced Perry into revealing
that before killing him.”

Hildebrandt did not appear to be moved.

“All right then,
fuck it
—you can try to stop me. Sam?”

McBurney said to Hildebrandt, “Could it be that making you
think
he exited with the rest of the crowd is exactly what he’s counting on?”

Agent Brophy approached them while stuffing his cell phone
inside his coat. “Miller does recall seeing a silenced weapon. Forensics dug a
forty-five caliber slug out of a second floor bedroom wall.”

Hildebrandt muttered another swear. “Brophy and I get to
call the shots down there every step of the way. And try not to get shot, okay?
It’ll be my ass if you do.”

With the alarm blaring, Stuart led the trio past the
elevator and into the stairwell.

“How big is this facility?” Agent Brophy asked as they
descended the steps.

“Offices for three-sixty, plus the well—that’s the applied
physics lab, roughly the size of a basketball court with an observation loft. The
computer area houses, I don’t know, a few dozen of these refrigerator-sized
servers and so forth. That’s where my two engineers should be.”

“You don’t think the alarm might bring Emily out?” McBurney
asked.

Stuart held up his watch. McBurney got the idea; time was
running out. He directed them to the windowless steel door on the landing of
the fourth flight of stairs. A burnished aluminum placard indicated ‘Sublevel
2.’

“Back,” Hildebrandt advised the civilians as both FBI
agents drew their weapons. Brophy pulled the door open and Hildebrandt stepped
through. McBurney and then Stuart entered, with Brophy closing the rear.

Stuart pointed out the illuminated green light over the
steel access door to the Project facility—the fire alarm had in fact disabled
the lock. More disturbing, the security monitor that displayed the number of
facility occupants showed a tally of
three
.

Hildebrandt acknowledged with a grudging nod. “Are there a
lot of places to hide in there?”

The look on Stuart’s face needed no explanation.

“Terrific.”

This time, both FBI men led the way their weapons drawn. Stuart
and McBurney followed them into a large, poorly lit room. The two ceiling-mounted
emergency floods cast hard shadows, making it relatively easy for someone to
lay waiting within the darkened maze of cubicles. The droning alarm could only further
mask Devinn’s advance on his quarry.

“I can throw the breaker for the lights,” Stuart quietly suggested.

Hildebrandt briefly considered that. “You might alert the
wrong people.”

They advanced through the sea of cubicles, around the
corner and down to the end of a darkened corridor.

Hildebrandt studied the closed door. “What’s through
there?”

“The other half of the corridor,” replied Stuart. “I’ve
never seen it closed before.”

“Why is it closed now?”

Stuart shook his head.

Hildebrandt reached out from his crouch, pressed the latch
release bar, and began to open the door. The fire alarm fell suddenly silent.

Hildebrandt exchanged a stunned look with Brophy. “Hey Stuart,
did we just get locked out of anywhere?”

“The computer room,” Stuart offered, eyeing the FBI men. “That’s
where I expect to find Emily and Thackeray.”

The foursome ran full bore for the remaining length of the
corridor. Stuart directed them left. Passing through several more office areas,
he led them finally to the door behind which Stuart hoped they would find Emily
and Thack safely at work—he pushed their grisly discovery of Ralph Perry out of
his mind.

Out of breath, Stuart pointed at the numeric keypad
embedded in the wall. “I don’t know the combination.”

FROM HIS CROUCHED
position
behind a videoconferencing cabinet, Paul Devinn was able to peer across the
darkened conference room through the glass partition at anybody passing by in
the corridor. Lee had warned him correctly after all, he realized. Stuart and
the CIA officer had not been alone.

Devinn held his wristwatch to capture the light and saw
that it was 10:02
A.M.
Time was running
down, but to exactly what he didn’t know. Devinn froze when another
interruption broke the silence.

HILDEBRANDT HAMMERED
the
door with the butt end of his pistol. After several seconds, the door remained
closed. He rapped again, harder this time and accompanied by Stuart shouting Emily’s
name. The thumb tang on the door handle toggled. The FBI agents stood back and
readied their weapons. The door swung slowly inward.

Emily Chang peered from behind the other side—she froze,
terrified, upon seeing two handguns leveled at her. Her eyes flickered to
Stuart.

“Stu!” She pulled the door open and flung her arms around
his neck.

Stuart held Emily in his arms wearing an embarrassed smile.
Before long, Emily seemed aware of the stares and withdrew her embrace.

Looking full at Emily’s bruised, swollen cheek, Stuart
became incensed. “Are you okay?”

Hildebrandt shared a look with McBurney. “Why don’t we move
this little reunion inside.” Agent Brophy remained outside the door to post
watch.

Inside, Emily held Stuart’s gaze. “We’ve run into some
serious problems.”

“So have we all. We found Ralph Perry dead.”

Emily gasped. “Devinn? He followed us here?”

“Some of us think so.”

Having herded everyone inside, Hildebrandt’s interest
turned to the droning electronic buzz. “What’s back there?”

“That’s a computer server farm,” Milton Thackeray replied. “There’s
also a flight of stairs that lead down to a door to the well. It was locked
when I checked it an hour ago.”

Hildebrandt wielded his handgun and disappeared to
investigate.

“Let’s hear about these problems you’re having,” said
Stuart, at which point McBurney became the object of uneasy looks. “Sam knows
we intend to hijack the satellite.”

Thackeray’s smile revealed a chipped tooth. “Hijack, huh?”

“I quit using the word ‘hack.’ Doesn’t sound appropriate
for what we intend to do, you know, render perfectly harmless something so
dangerous.”

“Ah...okay. Whatever words you choose, things are shaping
up pretty shitty.” At the top of the list Thackeray cited the absence of the
satellite encryption algorithm and key. Emily added with disappointment that
they had not completely run the software test simulation.

“Sounds like we’re screwed,” McBurney noted, giving voice
to everyone’s fear. “I presume Deng indicated when he’d be able to send this information
you need?”

“I’m not ready to give up on Deng,” Stuart insisted. “He
thought it was going to take time to get his hands on the necessary files. And
he had some issue with black market Internet access to deal with before he
could send it.”

McBurney cocked an eyebrow.

“Deng and I figured we had no choice but to forego the next
attack sequence, if in fact there was one, so we decided to aim for this
morning. By the way, he said the random key authentication makes it impossible
to hack into this thing until
after
the system is already armed.”

Emily and Thackeray exchanged a look of disbelief. “Our
window has always been that narrow?” Emily asked, realizing with dread the
implied lack of time for testing their new code. “When did you plan on telling
us?”

“I’d have told you a lot sooner. I hadn’t planned on being
held for interrogation by government thugs.”

McBurney ignored him. Hildebrandt rejoined the group,
apparently satisfied there were no immediate threats.

Stuart asked Emily, “What time is it in Beijing?”

“They’re thirteen hours ahead. It’s coming up on eleven
P.M.
”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah, oh shit,” Thackeray agreed.

“I’ve go to ask. Where do you put the satellite’s location
right now?”

Thackeray studied his monitor. He looked at Stuart. “Tashkent,
Uzbekistan, and haulin’ ass.”

Seeing she had been through a lot physically, Stuart
worried about the internal sort of torment that Emily might be battling now. He
wondered how she was grappling with the latest revelation regarding her
parents. Did she actually suspect that her father might be working to defeat
them—from within the very bowels of the Beijing satellite center?

Now didn’t seem the time to bring up the fate of her
father. “Why do I get the feeling that Devinn is sensitive to our schedule?”

“I think he knows our schedule,” Emily said, something like
hatred in her eyes, “but definitely not our objective.”

“How about telling me?” Hildebrandt said in a fit of
frustration. “
What
schedule, and just what the
fuck
...excuse me,
Miss Chang. Just what is going on here?”

McBurney gestured toward the two software engineers. “Why
not we just worry about protecting them from your suspect. Sounds like we need
to buy them a little time.”

Linda Potter’s trembling voice came over the public address
system requesting that Stuart call her extension. Stuart picked up the nearest
telephone. “Linda, this is Stuart...yes, we are...he is...thanks, okay, I’ll
tell him...no, we’ll let Mr. Hildebrandt handle that.” He hung up the
telephone. “Two FBI guys upstairs say they’re here to see you.”

“That was fast,” said Hildebrandt, observing how little
time had elapsed since Brophy phoned in the request. “How do I get back inside
this place without having to set off the fire alarm?”

Stuart suggested that Hildebrandt call from the visitor
telephone outside the security entrance. They would send Agent Brophy to
readmit him along with the arriving FBI.

On his way to the elevator—he assumed it was working
now—Hildebrandt arrived at the security concourse. Oddly enough, he found the
door ajar. He knelt to examine what appeared to be a circular rubber disc of
the sort used beneath furniture. Obviously somebody—Devinn?—had placed it there
to prop open the door. He was tempted to drop it into his pocket, thought
better of it, and returned the makeshift doorstopper to where he’d found it.

*     *     *

“WHAT THE HELL,
Rong,
why the blank stare?” the Second Department chief ribbed his fellow committee
member, gesturing toward the largely blank Sony projection screen. But the
insinuation was genuine.

Rong was beginning to think that he should not have permitted
the commissioner to leave just yet.
I warned Chen not to distract the old
bastard.

Catching Rong’s glare, Chen Ruihan offered his explanation
to the department chief that they should expect to see an aerial image of three
buildings, arranged around a parking area full of automobiles, before the image
converged on that which housed the enemy technology archive. The rooftop of
this building, he said, will appear congested with telecommunications gear. “The
video transmission will be activated when the attack sequence is imminent.”