Wall of Night (12 page)

Williamsburg, Virginia

Oaken pushed through the ER doors and immediately saw Paul Randall.

“Hey, Walt.”

“How is she?”

“Still in surgery.” Randall explained Samantha's injuries. “They've got a good vascular department here. If it's fixable, they'll do it.”

“Where are they?”

“Upstairs in the lounge. Come on.”

Oaken found a bleary-eyed Charlie Latham pacing the hallway near the elevators. He saw Oaken and walked over. They embraced. “Thanks for coming, Walt.”

“How's Bonnie?”

“She's okay.”

“What happened?”

“The cops are saying hit-and-run. They're still canvassing, but so far there are no witnesses.”

“What can I do?” Oaken asked. “Tell me how I can help.”

“When she gets out of surgery, we'll talk. I'm going to need a favor, Walt. A big one.”

Oaken and Latham had met nearly ten years before during an antiterrorism conference, Oaken from the State Department's INR, Latham from the FBI, and had been friends ever since, having lunch and coffee as their schedules permitted. Oaken always assumed Latham knew Holystone's role with the CIA went beyond mere consultation, but Charlie had never pressed the issue.

Until now
, Oaken thought. He felt certain Latham had called him in search of more than moral support. It would have something to do with Samantha, but what?

She got out of surgery three hours later. Though severe, the damage to the artery had been repaired. She would be hospitalized for another week, in double leg casts for three months, and in physical rehabilitation for six months after that, but by this time next year she would be as good as new.

Oaken and Randall left Charlie and Bonnie to be with their daughter and wandered down to the cafeteria. An hour later, Latham joined them. His eyes were red rimmed, but he was smiling. “She's okay, she's gonna be okay.”

Randall clapped him on the shoulder and Oaken said, “Thank God.”
Latham poured himself a cup of coffee. “Walt, this wasn't an accident.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Samantha's awake; we talked. Now she's remembering she'd seen the car that hit her around campus the last few days. It stuck with her because it had Maryland plates and the hood ornament was missing; an older model, light blue Cadillac. The more she thought about it, the more she remembered seeing it. She would come out of a class, and there it was; after lunch, there it was.”

“An old boyfriend maybe?”

“No. I've got nothing to back this up, but … you heard about the Baker murders?”

“Just what I read in the papers.”

Latham spent the next twenty minutes taking Oaken through the case: the murders, their suspicions about the Guoanbu, Baker's secret bank account, the former LRRP Mike Skeldon, and finally his suspension from the case. “I know it's a big leap, but I can't help feeling like somebody wants me to drop this—or at least get sidetracked.”

A very big leap
, Oaken thought. Though he knew better than to discount Charlie's instincts, Oaken was skeptical. Latham's little girl had nearly been killed; that was enough to cloud anyone's thinking. “Supposing that's true, why go after Samantha? You were already off the case.”

Randall answered: “Look at it this way: If somebody kills or kidnaps the child of a cop or FBI agent, the weight of the whole U.S. law enforcement system crashes down on them. On the other hand, if the child is hurt, say in a random accident, all you get is a distraught mother or father. The last thing that agent is thinking about is his or her caseload.”

Oaken spread his hands. “Charlie, I'm not unsympathetic, but this is a real stretch.”

“Humor me. A Commerce Department employee is murdered; he's involved with a foreign intelligence agency; he's paying an Army commando hundreds of thousands of dollars; and just as I'm starting to make headway, I'm jerked off the case.”

“You think the Justice investigation is bogus?”

“I think it's too convenient. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. No harm done. Walt, somebody ran down my little girl. I can't afford to assume anything—not until I'm sure.”

Looking into Latham's eyes, Oaken found himself thinking of his own daughters. If there was even a chance—even one in a million—that someone was trying to hurt them, how would he react?

Oaken nodded. “Tell me what you need.”

Irkutsk, Republic of Sakha, Siberia, Russian Federation

Lieutenant General Vasily Basnin stared at the peeling yellow paint on the ceiling and thought,
An old library for a headquarters building
… what's the army coming to?
Of course, he admitted, it could be worse. The city of Irkutsk was nearly 350 years old, and some parts of it looked older still.

From that perspective, this place was brand-new.

Founded as an
ostrog
, or fortress, in 1661 at the confluence of the Irkut and Angara rivers, Irkutsk was known locally as the “Jewel of Siberia,” a nickname, that had never quite caught on. If not for its proximity to gorgeous Lake Baikal, Basnin thought, Irkutsk would be all but worthless.

Born and raised in St. Petersburg, Basnin's assignment as the Irkutsk Army Garrison's commandant felt like a slap in the face. This was the most reviled command slot in the Far East District, and yet here he was, servant of the Motherland, protecting this backwater village from … what, exactly? Protesting fur traders? Surly lumberjacks?

Though the population of Sakha—which the locals called Yakutia—was predominantly Russian, the formerly indigenous population of Buryats, Dolgans, and Yukagirs, emboldened by
glasnost
, had begun to protest discrimination on the part of their Russian masters. With the rolls of the Sakhan government dominated by Russians, little had changed for Yakuts since the Federation's birth—or since the birth of the Soviet, for that matter.

At least one thing has changed
, Basnin thought.
Unionization
. All the downtrodden natives had banded together into unions. A goddamned coalition of horse breeders, lumberjacks, and fur traders! Of course, it might pay to coddle the hunters, Basnin thought. With Moscow cutting the army's funding at every turn, he'd been forced to supplement his garrison's rations with local game. And what of the fur traders and horse breeders? If the money continued to dwindle, would his men be wearing beaver coats and riding around on horses instead of in armored personnel carriers?

With any luck the upcoming elections in Moscow would bring some relief. If the polls were correct, that Bulganin fellow might soon be the Federation's new president, which might be good for the army—if, that was, Bulganin kept his promise to resume the military restructuring Putin had abandoned the previous year.

Basnin checked his watch. Almost supper time. A quick bite, then back to his quarters for some television. At least tonight we would have some peace. Thus far, the unionists had been cooperative enough to register their protest plans with the city. Tonight they were taking a break, which in turn meant a break for his troops.

Basnin had just drifted off to sleep when the knock came at his door. He rolled over and looked at the clock: Almost midnight. He got up, threw on his robe, shuffled to the door, and opened it.

“Apologies for disturbing you, General,” a soldier said. “The duty officer sent me—”

“What is it?” Basnin growled. “What's the problem?”

“The protesters, sir. They're back.”

So much for the niceties of schedules.
“Where? How many?”

“At the Railway Monument. Several hundred. It looks like they're preparing to march.”

“They're probably headed for city admin building. Wait in the truck. I'll get dressed.”

Goddamned natives
, Basnin thought.
Just one night of peace
…

They were nearing the corner of Karl Marx Street when Basnin saw it: Flickering flames on the street bordering the river. “What is that?” Basnin asked.

“Torches, sir. They're carrying torches.”

“You're kidding.”

“No, sir,” the soldier replied, then laughed. “Just like Frankenstein, eh, sir?”

“What?”

“The angry villagers in Frankenstein. You know—”

“Yes, Corporal, just like Frankenstein. Turn around. Circle up Gagarina; no sense trying to drive through the mob.”

Five minutes later they were driving along the river's edge. Two hundred meters from the monument, Basnin ordered the driver to stop, then got out.

At least three hundred strong, the protesters milled around the base of the monument. At their center, the monument's red granite obelisk rose into the night sky, reflecting the light from the torches. Amid the cacophony of voices, Basin could hear the occasional bark of a soldier's voice as troops hurried to set up a perimeter “Where are the riot control troops?” he asked his driver.

“On the other side of the crowd, posted at the Okhiopkov Theater. The IFVs are—”

“IFVs?” An Infantry Fighting Vehicle was essentially a light reconnaissance tank. But Basnin knew in the eyes of civilians, a tank was a tank. Disorganized mobs tended to run from them; well-organized mobs tended to challenge them. “Who ordered IFVs deployed?” he demanded.

“All our trucks are down for maintenance, sir. The duty officer decided—”

Now Basnin saw them: Two BRT-70s parked on the museum lawn, their 14.5 mm cannons pointing toward the mob. “Get the unit commander on the radio,” he barked. “I want those BRTs pulled back immediately! And for God's sake, get those turrets turned away from the crowd! If—”

From the trees around the library Basnin saw a flash of light, followed by what looked like a smoke trail streaking through the darkness. A half-second later one of the BRTs rocked sideways and burst into flames.

The crowd broke, half of the protesters running up Gagarina and Karl Marx Streets, the rest fleeing toward the trees along the Okhiopkov Theatre—toward the surviving BRT.

No, no, no
… Basnin thought, praying the BRT commander was seasoned enough to show restraint.
Please, God, don't
—

The rapid, overlapping boom of the 14.5 mm cannon cut through the night. The cannon's shells—each larger than a man's thumb and traveling at twice the speed of sound—raked through the crowd. Bodies began to drop. People stumbled about, some missing limbs, some torn open by shards of flying stone and concrete, still others falling under the crush of the stampede.

Behind him, Basnin could hear his driver yelling into the radio, “Cease fire, cease fire!”

The cannon stopped firing.

The square fell into silence. In the distance Basnin could hear screaming. A pall of smoke drifted over the square. In the distance came screaming. Basnin could see bodies writhing on the ground. A man in a fur hat struggled to his knees. Eyes wide, he reached across his body, feeling for an arm that was now just a bloody stump. A young girl's voice called, “Mother … Mother …”

Basnin stared at the scene, stunned and momentarily confused.
Oh God, what have we done … ?
He turned to the driver. “Call the hospital! Tell them to send ambulances! Quickly!”

New Zealand

If he hadn't known better, Tanner might have mistaken the view for a scene straight from a Norwegian postcard. He now knew why this region of New Zealand was called the “Fjordlands.”

Carved by glaciers during the last ice age, the southwestern flank of New Zealand is crosscut with towering mountains, ice blue lakes, tumbling waterfalls, and alpine forests, all of which made the thirty-five-mile-long Milford Track one of the country's biggest attractions.

After some haggling, they found a guide in Sandfly Point who was willing to drive them up the mountain to where they now stood, Giant's Gate Falls overlooking Lake Ada. Together they stepped to the edge and looked down. Beneath them the mountain dropped away to the lake's surface nearly four thousand feet below. “Wow,” Cahil murmured.

“Amen,” Tanner whispered.

According to Maori folklore, the Fjordlands were created millions of years ago by a giant who, after a particularly long day of world walking, had unwittingly dragged the tip of his spear across land, allowing the ocean to rush into the gouges.

Cahil said, “Almost makes me want to sing
The Sound of Music.
”

Tanner laughed. “The hills are alive with elusive
Guoanbu
spies?”

“It does have a nice ring to it.”

“Sing on. I promise not to tell Julie Andrews.”

“Oaks is sure about this? It doesn't strike me as a likely hangout for a retired Chinese spook. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Given Walt's track record, it could be worse.”

The last two “vacations” Oaken had planned for them had involved a sinking ship in Alaska and a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. By comparison, this looked suspiciously pleasant.

“He swears this is it,” Tanner replied and pointed across the lake to the snowcapped peak of Mount Ada. “Fong's ranch should be in the valley on the other side.”

“How do we get there?”

Tanner looked south toward McKay Falls until he spotted the winding trail that led down to the shore. “Down there,” Briggs said. “We can catch the ferry. After that, we're off the map.”

The final phase of Oaken's search for Moh Yen Fong, the
Guoanbu
agent known as Genoa, turned out to be the easiest. Armed with Fong's true identity, Oaken had again turned to the Kyung database but, unsurprisingly, found little help there. It was unlikely the
Guoanbu
would either mention Moh Yen Fong by name or continue to use his code name after Ledger was finished.

Oaken turned to ECHELON. Cloaked in equal parts myth, suspicion, and secrecy, ECHELON is a National Security Agency project created to monitor millions of e-mails, faxes, telexes, and, unbeknownst to most, capture phone calls and radio transmissions.

If, for example, a DEA informant reports to his controllers that a Columbian judge has been targeted for assassination by a drug cartel, the NSA can program ECHELON to scan its captures for word convergences such as the judge's name, “kill,” and “bomb,” then flag them for attention.

Though ECHELON rarely produces ready-to-wear or even earth-shattering intelligence, it does give the U.S. and British intelligence communities an unequalled view of the world's ever-changing communications puzzle.

With a little horsepower from Dick Mason, Oaken's request went straight to the NSA's director of archives, who punched in Oaken's search string.

It took ECHELON thirty-eight hours to search the twelve years' worth of data it had accumulated since Ledger's demise, but in the end Oaken owed his breakthrough not to a painstaking review of the output, but to the meticulous record keeping of the People's Liberation Army's Bureau of Personnel.

Guoanbu
operative or not, Moh Yen Fong was first and foremost a military man; consequently, every detail of his life, from doctor's visits to performance evaluations was meticulously recorded.

With the help of further searches to narrow the field, Oaken finally found a telex from the Bureau of Personnel to Fong's last command posting. An NSA translator quickly recognized it as a separation of service report. “Basically it's a DD-two-fourteen form—what our people get when they retire or are discharged,” the translator told him.

The report listed Fong's home address, his phone number, next of kin, and most importantly Oaken would soon learn, his e-mail address.

Oaken returned to the ECHELON output, this time using only Fong's e-mail address. He got over two-hundred matches, which he further filtered by frequently repeated words and phrases. Time and again, the same ones kept appearing: “Te Ami,” “Ada,” “great-grandfather,” and “sheep.”

Knowing “Te Anu” and “Ada” were both geographical names found only in New Zealand, Oaken hacked his way into Auckland's Ministry of Immigration's computer system and started hunting. It took less than two hours. “Believe it or not,” Oaken told Tanner, “New Zealand has had a sizable Chinese diaspora community since the mid-1880s. They farm, fish, herd sheep—”

“And this is where Fong ran off to?”

“Yep. He probably had a hell of a time convincing the
Guoanbu
to let him out of the country, but that's where he went. His family has owned sheep land there for nearly a hundred years.”

“So, he traded in spying for sheep ranching,” Cahil said. “Talk about a career change.”

“There's a downside, though,” Oaken said. “The
Guoanbu
has had a security detail assigned to Fong since he moved. At least eight men, living on the ranch full-time with him; they probably work as laborers.”

“Chinese cowboys,” Tanner said. “This should be interesting.”

It was midmorning by the time they reached the ferry landing.

They walked to the end of the deserted jetty, where they found a log-and-plank ferry bumping lazily against the moorings. A man in a red parka lay on a chaise lounge on the deck.

“Morning,” Tanner called.

“Morning, Wanna cross?”

“If you can squeeze us in.”

The man chuckled. “I think I can manage it.” He nodded at their backpacks. “You're going the wrong way if you're looking for Milford Track.”

Tanner smiled. “We're on the economy tour.”

Thirty minutes later they were standing on the eastern shore of Lake Ada and staring up at the mountainside as the ferry chugged its way back across the lake. “Please tell me we don't have to climb that thing,” Cahil murmured.

“Not unless the map is wrong. We follow the ridge for about five miles; once there we should find a pass that'll take us through to the high meadows where Fong's ranch is.”

Washington,
O.C.

“Do we have any casualty figures yet?” asked President Martin.

“Initial estimates say fifty-four,” replied Mason. “Including six children. That figure may change as more information comes in, but not by much.”

News of the “Irkutsk Massacre” had spread quickly, which Mason found particularly surprising given the remoteness of the location. During the Cold War news of this kind of incident may have never reached the West. Nowadays, CNN, Reuters, and API had it on the wire within hours.

“What do we know?” asked Bousikaris.

“Not much. There were over three hundred protesters. Some reports say there were Federation tanks present, others say just scout vehicles—like BRTs or BMPs. One of them exploded, cause unknown, and the mob bolted. The surviving vehicle's commander opened fire.”

“God almighty,” Bousikaris said. “What kind of armament are we talking about?”

“Heavy machine gun. Reports say the shooting lasted less than ten seconds. Judging by the number of casualties, it was probably a 14.5 millimeter—essentially a sixty-caliber machine gun.”

“What's happening now?” asked President Martin.

“Both the Red Cross and the UN are offering aid, but so far no reply from Moscow.”

“Typical Russian mentality,” Martin said.

“Maybe yes, maybe no. Right now they're trying to figure out what happened. Irkutsk is seven hours from Moscow. Until they get the right people on the scene, they're smart to keep quiet.”

“Especially if you're trying to cover something up,” Bousikaris said.

Mason didn't respond. Even he, a Cold Warrior to the core, knew that no government—communist, socialist, or otherwise—was either purely good or purely evil. He was surprised Martin and Bousikaris had jumped to that conclusion; reactionism was a dangerous quality for a president—especially one like Martin, whose ego rarely let him admit mistakes. As far as Mason was concerned, imprudence, conceit, and obstinacy had caused more wars than anything else.

“Only time will tell whether they'll try to gloss it over,” Mason said. “The question is, how is this going to affect the presidential elections? If Bulganin's smart, he'll use Irkutsk.”

“How so?” asked Martin.

“Polarization. Within hours we'll probably see him speaking out: ‘Are these the actions of a caring, responsive government? A government that guns down citizens who simply want fair treatment?'—that sort of thing. If he can get the voters whipped up, it'll work to his advantage.”

“Vote their hearts, not their minds,” said Martin. “No room in the polling booth for both.”

“Exactly.”

“We need to start thinking about a response. The world is going to be watching which way we go. We'll need all the facts, Dick. I assume you'll keep Howard informed.”

Mason read between the lines:
Let's see which way the political wind is blowing before we commit ourselves.
If Bulganin was able to turn this incident to his advantage, he might soon be the next president of the Russian Federation—in which case Martin would want to be on the winning side.

Damn the issues,
full speed ahead,
thought Mason.

Holystone Office

Latham's plea to Oaken was straightforward:
Help me get my family to safety,
then give me the backup I need to finish the Baker investigation.

Straightforward but fraught with danger,
Leland Dutcher thought when Oaken approached him. Dutcher knew Latham well enough to take seriously his suspicions, but as had Oaken, he wondered whether Charlie's thinking was governed more by the father in him, or by the FBI agent in him.

If he agreed to help, he would be pitting Holystone against both the FBI and the Department of Justice—and given the nature of Holystone's work, that was the kind of exposure they couldn't afford.

Latham accepted a cup of coffee from Dutcher and leaned back in one of the overstuffed chairs in Holystone's conference room. “How is she?” said Dutcher.

“Better,” said Latham. “She's gonna be okay.”

“I'm glad, Charlie. I understand they found the car.”

Latham nodded. “It belongs to an elderly woman in Chevy Chase; she hadn't driven it in two months. She didn't even know it was missing. They found it abandoned twenty miles outside Williamsburg, full of cigarette butts and empty beer bottles.”

“Window dressing?” Oaken said.

“That's my guess. Somebody's trying to make it look like a stalker or a joyride gone bad.”

“Smart,” said Dutcher.

“And damned frightening,” Oaken added. “It means whoever took it knew the car's lack of use would buy them time; same thing with the butts and bottles. It would send the police in the wrong direction. Unless it
was
random, that is.”

“It wasn't,” Latham said. “The
Guoanbu
is methodical. Whether they planned to go after Samantha from the start, I don't know, but you can be sure they didn't do this on a whim. It was insurance. Truth is, I doubt they were trying to kill her. Something like that … It would be bad, but after a few weeks I'd be back at work. This way … it was designed to tie me up.”

“When will it be safe to move her?”

Latham sat forward. “You're going to help me?”

Dutcher nodded. “You have to understand, though: Our way of doing things may be a little more … gray than you're used to.”

“I'm okay with that. The people we're up against don't give a damn about the law. If we have to play a little dirty to get them, so be it.”

“Let's hope it doesn't go that far,” Dutcher said. “First things first: We need to get Bonnie and your girls someplace safe. Once that's done, we start hunting.”