Thompson fixed his eyes somewhere over Devinn’s shoulder.
Devinn leaned forward. “Listen up. It’s foolish for us to
meet like this, Sean. From now on we’re supposed to be strangers. Do you
understand?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” Devinn smiled broadly. “Just take it easy for a
while.”
Thompson bid his goodbye with a sheepish grin. Waiting for
the cashier to ring-up his change, Devinn watched the engineer walk with an air
of uncertainty out of the restaurant. A minute later Thompson’s battered
Hyundai pulled into the traffic.
Behind the wheel of his Maserati GranTurismo, heading home
to his townhouse in the chic western hills overlooking the city, Devinn reached
for his cellular telephone. Perhaps he could resurrect those dinner plans,
after all.
15
“YOU HAVE SIMPLY
got
to be tired of that old smokestack technology you’re working on,” Ralph Perry
said between sips of his wine.
Stuart’s business partner had left word with his secretary
that he wanted to meet with him, and was willing to layover his flight from the
west coast in order to make it happen. Stuart was exhausted and had no interest
in meeting for dinner, but with the crash investigation into its fifth week, he
did owe Perry an explanation.
“Not a matter of how tired I am,” Stuart replied. “It’s got
to be seen through.”
“Well.” Perry washed down a mouthful of South American
prawn with another sip of Riesling. “Even in this downturn, CLI’s business mix
is proving a winner. Take a look around the dining room—folks just aren’t
shelling out three-hundred bucks for dinner these days. Hell, I can’t remember
the last time a four-star restaurant gave me a table on such short notice. Yet
our Medical Group sales are up, Military a notch, Telecom down but stable. The
crunch is actually drawing outsource business to our new satellite services
unit. Good business mix—good strategy.” Perry looked Stuart in the eye. “We did
okay, you know that?”
Stuart certainly had to agree, although his partner now
more or less ran the business himself that the two of them built. As younger
men eager for risk, an old Strategic Defense Initiative contractor that hit
upon hard times had caught their attention. Perry had convinced his friend of
the opportunity to transfer the company’s laser technology from military to
medical markets. So they pooled their savings and borrowed creatively in order
to purchase and take control of the company. Each brought different skills to
the mix, Perry’s in marketing savvy and a knack for cutting lucrative
financing; Stuart’s in operations and his eye for hiring the right people. Seven
hard, lean years later they succeeded in turning Coherent Light Incorporated
into a small and prosperous group of businesses, exploiting synergies of medical
and military laser technologies, fiber optic telecommunications and, since
Stuart’s departure, Perry’s expansion into satellite telecommunications
services.
None of it had come without a heavy personal toll. Stuart’s
original twenty-two percent stake in the company had been shaved in half by his
divorce settlement. Related problems had contributed to Stuart’s three year
hiatus. For five months now Perry had steadily turned up the heat for Stuart’s
return, to which he agreed—contingent upon completion of Thanatech’s flight
test, which seemed at the time a suitable stepping off point.
“If it’s so good, why do you need me back?” Stuart asked.
“Believe me when I say that this project
lusts
for
you.”
What Stuart could not believe was that his partner had ignored
his revulsion to wading into yet another big government contract. “Remember the
story about the tar baby, you know, the guy drove his fist into the face of the
tar baby, and it just sort of stuck?”
“Ah, bullshit.” Perry rejected Stuart’s skepticism with a
wave. “We’ve positioned ourselves to ride an economic revolution—this is going
to be the biggest paradigm shift since the creation of the railroad. That may
sound like a cliché but I am not exaggerating. CLI isn’t
at
the cutting
edge. We
are
the cutting edge.”
“How do you expect me to give a damn when I don’t know what
it is?”
“Can’t.” Perry shook his head. “Sorry.”
“Department of Defense?”
“Let’s just say they’ve provided a few of the security guidelines.
It’s Department of Energy but a commercial research venture all the way. I can
tell you that it draws on the same bonanza of green technology funding as this
energy-efficient engine of yours. Only, well...probably a whole lot more
funding.” Perry grinned.
Stuart let out a deep breath. “I should know soon how much
longer I’ll be.”
Later, after the dinner table had been cleared, Perry
cradled a snifter of Remy Martin XO. He looked at Stuart with the sort of
gratuitous smile reflecting both a suspicion and a desire. “You like
Cleveland?”
“Yeah.”
“Uh-huh. Well, I’m not happy about your delay. But I have
to attribute your reasoning to one of those quirky traits that got us where we
are. I trust you’re trying to finish up as soon as you can.”
“Nothing would make me happier than to be back in
Virginia.”
Perry leaned back, swirling his snifter—Stuart knew his
friend would not be so easily mollified. Not because Perry disregarded the
importance of Stuart’s commitment; Perry had been and always would be able to
serve only his own commitment. He wasn’t surprised or taken in by Perry when he
asked, “How’s Ashley been? Who’s been watching her since Angela died?”
It had been months since his ex-wife Angela’s death of
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, something obviously beyond his control, and still he
struggled to suppress an irrational sense of guilt. He had lost his appetite to
discuss it with anyone, even Ralph. “I’m very lucky. My sister and
brother-in-law have been helping out. They’ve a daughter of their own,
younger.”
“I’ll bet she misses her dad.”
“I see more of her now than when her mother was alive.”
“Weekends?”
“For a while I was even making it back in time Fridays to
pick her up at school.”
“You should try to hurry back. I mean, any kid prefers
a full-time dad.”
* * *
ON THE OPPOSITE
side
of town, Emily Chang received an e-mail message—sent first by a family friend
in Hunan Province, then to a cousin in San Jose, who forwarded it to her. The
message reported that her parents were missing, and that no one believed the
authorities who claimed to be looking for them. Everyone thought that Party
officials were too embarrassed to admit to having smuggled them off, or so the
message indicated, in order to administer her mother the medical care which
provincial hospitals could not provide. Emily’s cousin footnoted the message by
politely urging her not to worry, that her parents would turn up sooner rather
than later, healthy and in good cheer.
After reading the message for the third time, Emily held
her face in her hands and sobbed.
16
LOW, IRREGULAR BREATHING
of
lungs heavy with fluid cut the silent void of the underground vault. Attached
to the faintly visible ceiling were two objects. Dangling through a hole
cratered into the stone was a thin straight wire and at the end of it, a tiny
microphone. The powerful flood of light illuminating half of the room emanated
from a directional halogen lamp fixed to the top of a pole. Suspended
prominently in the glare of the light, a sling of mesh wire contained the
bottle of an intravenous drip, from which a clear plastic tube snaked through
the air to where it was taped inside the elbow of the prisoner.
The prisoner faced directly into the light where he lay on
his back at a forty-five degree angle, naked, strapped securely with wide
leather bands to the inclined surface of a large stone pedestal. The damp air
reeked of urine, mildew, the acrid smell of the man’s breath—the odor of
infection, malnutrition, fatigue. The sleep-deprived prisoner likely sensed
none of these stimuli—save that of the light. Stretching open each eyelid were
three silvery surgical staples. Inflamed tissue sagged between the staples at
one end where they attached to an eyelid, at the other they tugged at the
swollen red skin beyond eyebrow and cheek through ovalized holes and globules
of pus.
“Now then, Comrade Zhao. What fools planned your escape
north and away from the border?”
The heavily drugged prisoner’s jaw dropped open and
revealed his blotched tongue. His pupils quivered as they stared into space
from beneath a dull, milky glaze. “Where is she...must see Meilin’...she is
sick. I—” A spasm froze the prisoner’s back in an arch.
This incoherence prompted a lively exchange of harsh
whispers and expletives. A People’s Liberation Army nurse wearing green
fatigues and a surgical mask approached Zhao and squeezed an irrigating stream
of saline solution into his eyes. Next she reached up and twisted the petcock
to interrupt the intravenous drip of amyl nitrate, removed the bottle, and
replaced it with a bottle of Lactated Ringer’s solution. Finally she re-activated
the drip and scurried back to the shadows.
Thirty minutes passed before the heart rate monitor
displayed a stabilized increase in rhythm, signaling the prisoner’s gradual
emergence from the drug-induced state. Zhao Bocheng’s raspy breathing labored
with the terror of consciousness.
“Who was it that directed you north,
away
from the
border? Why should you be loyal to them? If not for their foolish prescriptions
you might have evaded our net. Who is it that helped you? How were you
contacted? Tell us, Zhao. Or should we simply ask your wife?”
The prisoner responded sluggishly. “What have you done with
her?”
The interrogation slogged on for another forty minutes, the
prisoner becoming gradually more lucid. The detention facility there beneath
Zhongnanhai in Beijing was unlike Qincheng and the rest of the Chinese gulag. Its
cells were reserved for subversive or corrupt high-level cadres, dissidents
particularly threatening to the perceived legitimacy of the Party. It was here
that Mao Zedong had slapped into irons two of the Cultural Revolution’s most
wronged national heroes, Liu Shaoqi and later, Deng Xiaoping. Tonight the six
tiny hard cells, concrete corridor, and iron-barred infirmary adjacent to the
interrogation vault were otherwise empty.
Suddenly a woman’s scream filled the air with an intensity
so shrill that Zhao convulsed, the skin of his ankles and waist bulging beyond
the edge of the leather restraints—the muscles contorting his face tore free
from the staples.
“Comrade, you must stop.”
“Meiling! What have you done!”
“We ask the questions.”
From far outside the vault came the sound of sobbing; a
guttural cry. It ceased abruptly.
“You snakes—
she is innocent!
I am the traitor! She
is very ill. You must let me see her!”
Minutes later came the scraping sound of approaching
footsteps, the squeal of the door on its hinges while sloshing across the
surface of water. The voice from the unseen face beyond the horizon of shadow
was patient, almost congenial. “Comrade Zhao, we have decided to allow you to
see your wife, after all.”
A PLA soldier approached the prisoner carrying a folded
white towel—and presented it to the prisoner, who strained his neck to look
down. The young man unfolded the towel. Against the knuckle and just above the
mutilated sever of a single finger was the gold glitter of a ring.
“NO!” Tears of anguish streamed down Zhao’s cheeks.
“You may see her, indeed. One piece at a time.”
Ninety minutes later, two State Security officers left
the nurse to her ministrations of the prisoner. Outside the entrance to the
vault, the senior officer picked up a telephone and delivered a message
confirming that the interrogation begun hours after his capture at Hong Kong’s
airport was complete.
* * *
STATE SECURITY
Deputy
Minister of Operations Chen Ruihan received the text version of that message on
his cell phone. The alert interrupted him from another unpleasant task, a
grueling dispute with the Personnel Bureau over who he could appoint to head
the Provincial Management Office—a vacancy created, coincidentally, as a result
of the defection attempt for which he was now being paged.
The defection attempt of a valuable physicist should never
have occurred. Chen suspected that the security minister’s life might hang in
the balance because of it, perhaps even his own. The Ministry of State
Security,
Guojia Anguan Bu
, was the country’s premier intelligence body
for conducting espionage and domestic counterespionage activities. It was
simply not credible that blame be assigned to inadequate resources; Chen
privately suspected it was more likely the result of having too many. Assigned
to fulfill their tasks were many thousands of officials in each of China’s
thirty-one provinces. Despite his invasive powers, the constant influx of
foreigners, civil unrest over privatization reform, pro-democracy cells and a
host of other concerns meant Chen’s domestic responsibilities all teetered
beyond control: sifting through the daily profusion of wiretap, Internet and video
surveillance, informant reports, and conducting investigation, apprehension,
and preliminary hearings—on foreigners and citizens alike, for atrocities that
ranged from waging peaceful revolution and economic crime to being active in
toppling the socialist order. For all of his resources, Chen’s various masters
nonetheless feared that the uncensored words of one single fugitive had threatened
to drive China to her knees as she approached her pinnacle of global
preeminence.