Covert One 4 - The Altman Code (37 page)

When his vision cleared, and the pain receded, two men he had not seen
were lifting his chair back onto its legs. Feng Dun’s face was inches
away, staring at him. His eyes were such a pale brown they appeared to
be empty sockets.

Feng said, “That gentle tap was to focus your attention, Colonel. You’ve
been skilled and intelligent. Don’t be stupid now. We won’t waste time
discussing who and what you are. The question that interests me now is
who do you work for?”

Jon swallowed. “Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, M. D., United States Army
Medical Research Institute … ”

The blow was little more than a slap this time, snapping his head
sideways, but drawing blood again, and leaving his ears ringing.

“You appear on no American intelligence roster we’ve found. Why is that?

Some secret section of the CIA? NSA? Maybe the NRO?”

His lips were swelling, making his speech thick. “Take your pick.”

The hand crushed the other side of his face, the room disappeared again,
but the chair did not move. Dimly he realized the job of the two other
men was to keep him upright as Feng beat him.

“You’re not a conventional agent,” Feng told him. “Who do you report
to?”

He could not feel his lips move and did not recognize his voice. “Who
are you? You’re not Public Security Bureau. Who thinks I’m not CIA, NSA?

Mcdermid? Someone inside … ?”

The two fists struck seconds apart, a perfect combination, and as
searing, crushing, swelling pain overwhelmed him and merciful blackness
washed toward him, his brain told him the man had been a prizefighter, a
professional, and he hit much too hard … hit too hard … hit too ..

. hard … Ralph Mcdermid stood behind Feng Dun. “Damnation, Feng. He’s
not going to tell us anything if he’s unconscious, now is he?”

“He’s strong. A big man. If we don’t hurt him, make him afraid not only
of pain and death, but of me, he’ll tell us nothing.”

“He’ll tell us nothing if he’s dead.” Feng smiled his wooden smile.
“That’s the fine print, Taipan. If he doesn’t believe we’ll kill him,
he’ll say nothing. But if he’s dead, he can’t say anything. One must
find the balance. My job is to convince him I’m so savage and reckless
that I’ll kill him by accident, not realize my own brutality, and get
carried away on a euphoria of inflicting pain.

Yes?”

Mcdermid flinched, as if suddenly afraid of Feng himself. “You’re the
expert.” Feng noted the fear and smiled again. “You see? That’s the
reaction I need from him. We’ll find out nothing until he can hardly
move his mouth to talk. Just enough pain so he can barely think, but not
so much that he can’t think.”

“Possibly less physical methods?” Mcdermid said uneasily.

“Oh, there’ll be those, too. Don’t worry. I won’t kill him yet, and
he’ll tell us whatever you want to know.”

Mcdermid nodded. Besides being a shade afraid of Feng’s
unpredictability, he was concerned about Feng in other ways. He had a
feeling the big ex-soldier was sneering at him the same way he had
sneered at his other employer–Yu Yongfu. At the time, Feng’s insults
had not been noteworthy, since he was reporting on Yu to Mcdermid. But
later, when Feng demonstrated the clout necessary to have a submarine
sent to shadow the USS John Crowe, Mcdermid started to worry.

At that point, what had been murky became clear: Feng had serious
military or national government connections far above what appeared to
be his station in life. As long as those resources were doing Mcdermid’s
bidding, Mcdermid was more than happy to pay Feng a fortune and overlook
his rudeness. Still, Mcdermid had not risen to be one of the most
powerful money men in the world by missing the obvious. Feng was
connected. Feng was dangerous. Mcdermid still had him under control, but
for how long, and what would be the price to keep him there?

Saturday, September 16.

Washington, D.C.

The cabinet meeting was behind him, and Congress had been alerted to the
brewing crisis with China. Carrying a mug of coffee, the president again
sat at the head of the long table in the windowless situation room. The
joint chiefs and his top civilian advisers had found their chairs,
shuffling papers and conversing in hushed voices with their aides.

The president barely registered their presence. Instead, he was thinking
about the millions across the country innocently going about their
business who, if the new situation leaked, would hear about a possible
war with China. Not a sportsmanlike excursion watched on TV, like Monday
Night Football. Not an undercover battle against terrorists or a small
conflict in a small country where fewer Americans would die fighting
than died in traffic accidents on a holiday weekend. Not just any war. A
real war … a big war … one that would detonate like a volcano and
continue night and day, day in and day out. The dead would be their sons
and daughters, or their neighbors or themselves, all returning home in
body bags. China.

“Sir?” It was Charlie Ouray.

The president blinked and noted all the solemn and stern, or angry and
anxious faces on both sides of the long table. They were watching him.

“Sorry,” he told the room. “I was seeing the ghosts of war past and war
future. I didn’t see war present. Can any of you?”

The river of faces reacted each according to who and what he and she
was. Shock that he, their commander in chief, would be defeatist. Fear
of what could be coming. Resolve … neither afraid nor fierce but
quietly determined. Solemnity at the magnitude of the unknown, near and
far. A few with the gleam of “great” things in their eyes, of honor and
awards and a place in history.

“No, sir, not really,” Admiral Brose said quietly. “No one can, and I
hope no one ever has to.”

“Amen,” Secretary of Defense Stanton intoned. Then his eyes glittered.

“That said, now we prepare. War with China, people. Are we ready?”

The deafening silence was an answer no one in the hushed room could
mistake. The president looked at his coffee and had no taste for it.

“If I may speak for my colleagues with the navy and air force,” Army
Chief-of-Staff Lieutenant General Tomas Guerrero declared, “the answer
is, not really. We’ve been planning, training, and preparing for the
exact opposite. We need–”

Air Force General Bruce Kelly broke in, “With all respect, I disagree.

With some exceptions, the bomber force is prepared for any war. We do
need to rethink our advanced fighter force, but for the immediate
future, I see little problem.”

“Well, dammit, we’re not ready,” Guerrero countered. “I’ve said it
before, and I say it now, the army’s been stripped of the bone and
muscle it needs for a long, tough, nose-to-nose war over a vast area
against a giant population, a mammoth army, and a national will to
fight.”

“The navy–” Admiral Brose began.

“Gentlemen!” National Security Adviser Powell-Hill protested from her
seat at the opposite end of the table, facing the president. “This isn’t
the time to bicker about details. The first action we have to take is to
prepare the complete readiness of what we do have. The second is to get
cracking on what we need.”

“The first action,” the grave voice of the president brought instant
silence, “is to prevent this confrontation from happening at all.” He
moved his adamant glare from face to face, one by one, until he had
circled the table.

“There will be no war. Period. None. That’s the bottom line. We do not
fight China. I’m convinced that cooler heads over there don’t want war.

I know we don’t, and we have to give those cooler heads a chance.” His
gaze arced around the table in the opposite direction, as if telling
them, one by one again, that he knew damn well some of them–and a lot
of their high-paying constituents–would like nothing more than an
expensive, thrilling hostility, and telling them, and their special
constituents, to forget it. “This confrontation has a solution.” His
tone left no room for argument. “Now, what are your ideas about what
that solution is?” Their blank faces reminded him of a roomful of New
Mexican ranch barons who had just been told to find ways to double the
water allotments for the Navajo and Hopi reservations. “I suppose,”
Secretary of State Padgett offered, “we could ask for a secret,
top-level summit to discuss the matter face to face.” The president
shook his head. “A meeting with whom, Abner? The Zhongnanhai leadership
will likely not want it to seem as if there’s anything to talk
about–not without calling the whole Central Committee into session and
then getting at least an eight-to-one majority on the Standing Committee
to approve it.”

“Then send them a message they can’t miss,” Guerrero suggested. “Approve
the appropriations for the air force’s new fighter, a bigger and
longer-range bomber, and the army’s Protector artillery system. That
will get their attention. Probably scare the shit out of them and get
them to a summit, too. Yes, with that threat hanging over them, I’d
think they’d jump for a summit in a nanosecond.” A murmur of approval
flowed around the room. Even Secretary Stanton failed to object. He
looked concerned, his face ashen, as if his resolve for the smaller,
quicker military had been shaken badly. Vice President Erikson demurred,
“I’m not sure that’s the right message to be sending, General.

It could escalate matters rather than pacifying them.” Stanton regained
some of his confidence. “Whatever we do will in all probability heighten
the problem, Brandon, even if we do nothing. Too little could be
construed as weakness; too much as threatening. I think some show of
force, resolve, and readiness could make them hesitate to push us too
hard.” Erikson nodded reluctantly. “You could be right, Harry. Perhaps a
simple approval of already existing weapons systems wouldn’t be too
strong.”

“Do we really want to return to a policy of mutual deterrence?

Something that could drag on for years and drain both national
economies?” the president asked. “Make China hunker down behind its
Great Wall again with its missiles bristling just when we’re making
progress?”

Admiral Brose’s voice boomed out over the geopolitical debate. “I think
what the president might find most effective is a smaller solution to
the immediate tactical problem. How do we prove what the Empress is
carrying?”

The blank looks reappeared on the faces of the gathered military and
civilian brains.

“That’d be nice,” President Castilla agreed mildly. “You have an idea
how to accomplish that, Stevens?”

“Send a crack team of SEALs from the Crowe to perform a clandestine
recon of the Empress’s cargo.”

“Can that be done?” Vice President Erikson wanted to know. “On the high
seas? From and to moving ships?”

“It can,” Brose assured him. “We have special equipment and trained
teams.”

“Safely?” Secretary Stanton worried.

“There’d be risk, naturally.”

“Of failure? With casualties?” Abner Padgett of State asked.

“Yes.” “Of discovery?” Erikson pressed.

“Yes.”

Secretary of State Padgett shook his head violently. “An overt act of
invasion, even aggression, against Chinese territory on the high seas?

At that point, we’re inviting war.”

Everybody nodded, solemnly or vigorously, in agreement, while the
president took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “How
much risk of discovery are you talking about, Admiral?”

“Minimal, I’d say. With the right team, under the right leader who’d
understand that his people could not–under any circumstances–be
discovered. To abort first no matter what the danger to the team.”

The president sat silently, his eyes distant, thinking again about the
millions of people across the country who might soon be nervously
watching TV or listening to the radio with one eye and one ear on the
alert as they went about their daily lives, which most were rightly
loathe to sacrifice for an unnecessary war.

His military and civilian advisers turned their collective gaze on Chief
Staff Charlie Ouray as if he could read what was happening inside
President Castilla’s mind.

“Sir?” Ouray said.

Castilla gave a small nod, more to himself than anyone else. “I’ll take
that under consideration, Stevens. It offers a possible solution.

Meanwhile, I need to inform all of you that for some days we’ve been
pursuing an intelligence operation that could solve the entire
situation.” He stood. “Thank you all. We’ll meet again soon. Until then,
I want everyone to get your sectors ready. Send me a report about how
you envision handling China and how and when you’ll be completely ready
for a full-scale conflict.”

Sunday, September 17.

Shanghai.

In the passenger compartment of his private Mercedes limousine, Wei
Gao-fan savored both his Cuban Cohiba and his recent success over Niu
Jianxing. With the Zhou Enlai flexing its torpedoes, and the American
frigate Crowe polishing its missiles, Niu, the reformer–in Wei’s mind,
“reformer” meant appeaser, revisionist, and capitalist–was going to
find few on the Central Committee receptive to his demeaning
“human-rights” treaty, or, in the end, the disastrous direction Niu
intended to take China.

The Mercedes was parked on a side street in the Changning district.

Separated from his bodyguard in the front seat by a panel of bulletproof
glass, Wei studied the area, where lights showed from windows, the
street’s only illumination. He was waiting for his chauffeur and second
bodyguard to return from their assignment.

Wei did not like loose threads or unresolved issues. Li Aorong and his
daughter were both, and they needed to be swept up and disposed of.

Until they were, he would not feel secure. His plan had risks, and while
Niu Jianxing was many things Wei disliked, a fool was not among them.