Covert One 4 - The Altman Code (6 page)

“Today?” Smith acted surprised. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be at my best,
Dr. Liang. I was in meetings and consultations until the small hours
last night. A day of rest, and I’ll be able to do justice to our
colleagues in the morning.”

Dr. Liang was startled. “Well, of course, that will be fine. I will
alert my staff to rearrange our schedule. But surely you will join us
for dinner. It would give all of us a great pleasure to reveal to you
the beauty of Shanghai after dark.” Smith resisted an urge to bow; it
was not a Chinese custom. “I’d be delighted, thank you. But perhaps we
can have a late start? Would nine o’clock do?” “That is agreeable. We
will be here.” Liang smiled and nodded understandingly. But there was an
edge to his voice as he added, “We will not keep you up too late, Dr.
Smith. That is a promise.” Was there suspicion behind the words and the
smile? Or was Dr. Liang simply losing patience? For a simple scientist,
he seemed to inspire a little too much fear in the desk clerk. Smith was
acutely aware he might have raised his colleague’s doubts by putting him
off in Taiwan, then seeking him out a few hours later, and, finally–no
matter how subtly he had tried to make the invitation seem to come from
Liang–hinting he would not turn down an immediate invitation. But with
the time pressure, he’d had to take the risk. Suspicious or not, the
scientist was at least smiling when he left. Smith watched through the
glass doors as he stopped at the limo. The driver appeared from
somewhere and spoke swiftly and urgently. Both got in, and the limo sped
away.

The bellman had taken his suitcase. Smith rode the elevator up to his
floor and found his room, still contemplating Dr. Liang, the limousine
driver who had inspected an engine that had given no indication it
needed inspecting, and the dark-blue Jetta. His bag was waiting, and the
bellman was gone–tipping was frowned upon in the People’s Republic,
although, as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, it was a custom more honored
in the breach than in the observance.

The room was everything Dr. Liang had promised. As large as a small
suite in most modern American or European luxury hotels, it was
atmospheric, with a king-sized bed and side tables recessed in a
wood-paneled alcove lighted softly by antique table lamps. There was
also a cozy sitting area with armchairs and coffee table, a
leather-inlaid desk, green ivy plants, and a full bathroom behind a
paneled wood door. With the chintz prints and piecrust tables, it looked
very British. The windows were expansive, but the view was far from
spectacular–neither the river, Pudong, the two suspension bridges, nor
the Bund. Instead, Smith looked out on the older, lower office buildings
and residences of the millions who staffed, fed, and operated the great
city.

Smith checked inside his suitcase. The all-but-invisible filament he’d
had installed in the interior was unbroken, which meant no one had
searched it. He decided he must be too jumpy, probably overreacting …
. Still, somewhere out there was the true manifest of the Empress as
well as the people who had created it and the people who had stolen it
from Mondragon. They might or might not be the same group. In any case,
he was reasonably certain some had seen him close enough that they would
recognize him again. By now, they might already know his name.

At the same time, all he had was a short glimpse of the big, tall leader
of the attackers–a Han Chinese with unusual red hair–and a meaningless
name scribbled on a coffeehouse napkin.

He was just starting to unpack when he heard footsteps in the corridor.

He slowed, listening. The sounds stopped outside his door. His pulse
accelerating, he padded across the room and flattened against the wall,
waiting.

As Dr. Liang Tianning entered the biomedical center, the staff secretary
nodded toward his private office. “There’s a man waiting, Dr. Liang. He
said he came to talk to you about your phone call. I … I couldn’t keep
him out.” She looked down at her hands in her lap and shivered. She was
young and shy, the way he preferred his secretaries. “I don’t like him.”

Dr. Liang admonished her. “He is an important man. Certainly not one you
should dislike so openly. No phone calls, please, while he is here. You
understand?”

She nodded, still looking down.

When Dr. Liang entered his office, the man was leaning against his
filing cabinet, across from the desk. He was smiling and idly whistling,
like a mischievous little boy.

Dr. Liang’s voice was uneasy. “I don’t know what I can add to what I
reported over the telephone, Major Pan.”

“Possibly nothing. But let’s find out.”

Major Pan Aitu was small and pudgy, with soft hands, a gentle voice, and
a benign smile. He wore a conservative gray European suit, clip-on
floral bow tie, and horn-rimmed glasses. There was nothing about him to
frighten anyone, until you looked behind the glasses. The eyes were
completely unresponsive. When he smiled, the eyes did not. When he
conversed in his quiet voice, the eyes did not animate or listen. They
watched. They looked at you, but they did not see you. It was impossible
to say at any given moment what they did see.

“Explain what has alarmed you about this Dr. Jon Smith,” Major Pan said.

“Has he been asking questions?”

“No, no. Nothing like that.” Liang fell into his desk chair. “It is only
that in Taiwan he was so eager, and then when we have arranged an
immediate visit to the research center here, he is quite suddenly too
tired. He says that tomorrow would be better.”

“You don’t think he’s tired?”

“In Taiwan, at the conference, he did not seem tired. At the airport in
Taipei, he was quite eager.”

“Explain to me exactly what happened in Taiwan.”

Liang described his approach to Smith, his invitation to dinner with
himself and his colleagues from the institute, and Smith’s excuse and
suggestion another time would be good.

“You thought he had no other engagement that night?”

Dr. Liang clicked his teeth, considering. “He was … well … evasive.
You know how you can sense when someone has been taken by surprise and
is quickly thinking of a polite way to refuse?”

Major Pan nodded, as much to himself as to Liang. “That’s when you left
it that you’d contact him for a more convenient occasion to confer about
your biomedical matters?”

“Yes.” There was something about Major Pan–perhaps the way he always
seemed to be waiting–that compelled people to say more. “It seemed the
right thing to do. His work at USAMRHD is important. We are anxious to
understand what they are doing. Perhaps there is something there to aid
our own research.”

“He is, then, a legitimate scientist?”

“A fine one.”

“But also an officer in the U.S. Army?”

“I suppose so. A colonel, I believe.”

“A lieutenant colonel,” Major Pan corrected absently, his expressionless
eyes turned inward, as he thought. “I have studied his record since your
call. There are, shall we say, odd occurrences in his past.”

“Odd? How?”

“Gaps. They are usually explained in his record as ‘ time,’ which is
military vocabulary for a holiday. A vacation. One occurred after the
death of his fiancee from a virus she was working with.”

“Yes, I know that virus. Frightening. Surely an absence is
understandable after such a cruel misfortune?”

“Possibly.” Major Pan nodded as if he had really heard, but his eyes
said his mind was somewhere else. “You did not see Smith again last
night?”

“No.”

“But you attended various talks and meetings?”

“Of course. It was why we were there.”

“Would you have expected that he’d be around, too?”

“Yes.” Liang frowned. “There were two in particular. One by an American
colleague, and another by a personal friend of his from the Pasteur. But
remember, he did tell me he was in meetings late into the night. There
were many to choose from.”

Major Pan considered. “It was the next morning that he suddenly
approached you to come to Shanghai to visit your institute?”

“Well, not in so many words. But I would say … he made it quite clear
he would be interested in an immediate invitation.” .

“How so? How did he happen to be with you this morning?” Dr. Liang
thought. “He joined us for breakfast. Usually he ate with his friend
from the Pasteur. During the meal, he casually mentioned he would like
to see our facility and speak to us about USAMRIID’s work.

When I said I could certainly arrange it in the near future, he became
regretful, suggesting it was difficult for him to travel so far, which
meant he was rarely in Asia. At that point I, of course, suggested that
since he was so close, why not now?”

“And he liked the idea?”

“He hemmed and hawed, but I could see it appealed to him.”

The major nodded to himself again. He abruptly slid off the filing
cabinet and was gone.

Dr. Liang stared at the closed door of his office, wondering what had
happened. He was certain he had reported everything by phone to the
Security Bureau, as he was required to do after every trip outside
China. Why had Major Pan come here, and what could he have learned just
now that made him leave so suddenly? The major had a reputation as a man
who succeeded in his work where everyone else failed. Liang shook his
head, feeling a disorienting chill of fear.

Beijing, China.

The highly secure conclave of Zhongnanhai stood in the
shadow of the legendary Forbidden City in central Beijing, where China’s
emperors and empresses once played and governed. For centuries,
Zhongnanhai was the imperial court’s pleasure garden, where horse races,
hunts, and festivals were held for nobility and their retainers on the
green banks of two lakes. In fact, Zhongnanhai meant “Central and
Southern Lake.”

After the Communists captured the country in 1949, they moved into the
vast complex and refurbished and remodeled the pagoda-roofed buildings.

Today, Zhongnanhai was alternately revered and reviled as the
all-powerful national seat of Chinese government–the new Forbidden
City. Here the Politburo, which numbered twenty-five, held forth in
regal splendor.

Although ultimate authority rested with them, the truth was that it was
the Politburo’s Standing Committee that really ruled. They were the
elite of the elite. Recently, the Standing Committee had been increased
from seven members to nine. Their decisions were rubber-stamped by the
Politburo and implemented by ministries and lower-level departments.

Many lived on the highly secure grounds with their families, in
traditional courtyard-style estates of several buildings, surrounded by
walls. Top staff members did, too, in apartments far more comfortable
than most of those available outside, in the metropolis.

Still, this was not the White House or 10 Downing Street or even the
Kremlin. Secretive, media-averse, Zhongnanhai showed on few tourist
maps, even though its general office address at 2 Fuyoujie was printed
clearly on Communist Party stationery. Surrounded by a
vermillion-colored wall like the one that had once shut the old
Forbidden City off from the world, the compound was so well designed
that seeing in or over the high walls from anywhere in Beijing was
impossible. Ordinary Chinese were not welcome. Foreigners even less so,
unless they were ruling heads of state.

Some of this pleased Niu Jianxing, but not all. Although he was one of
the elite Standing Committee and worked in Zhongnanhai, he chose to live
outside it, in the city itself. Instead of being decorated with
ornamental scrolls, dragons, and photographs, his office was spartan. He
believed in the basic socialist principle of from each according to his
abilities, to each according to his needs. His physical needs were
simple and unpretentious. His intellectual needs were something else
again.

Niu Jianxing leaned back behind his cluttered desk, entwined his
fingers, and closed his eyes. He was still within the circular pool of
light cast by his old desk lamp. It glared on his sunken cheeks and
delicate features, which were partially hidden behind tortoiseshell
glasses. The harsh light did not appear to bother him, as if he were so
deep in concentration he did not know there was any light at all, as if
nothing disturbing could exist in the tranquil world inside his mind.

Niu Jianxing had become a very important man by acquiring power step by
clandestine step. Ever since entering the party and the government, he
had found repose to be a great aid to concentration and correct
decisions. He would often sit silently like this at Politburo and
Standing Committee meetings. At first, the others had thought he was
asleep and had dismissed him as a lightweight from the countryside of
Tianjin. They talked as if he were not there–in fact, as if he did not
exist at all–until it became clear, to the permanent regret of a few
who had spoken too freely, that he heard every word and usually had
their problems solved or dismissed before they could even articulate
them.

After that, his admirers nicknamed him the Owl, a catchy name that
spread through the ranks and made him someone to be remembered. A savvy
politician as well as tactician, he had made it his personal chop.

At the moment, the Owl was pondering the disquieting rumor that some of
his colleagues on the Standing Committee had second thoughts about
signing the human-rights agreement with the United States he had worked
so hard to negotiate. He had spent the morning putting out feelers to
identify who those backsliders might be.

Strange that he’d had no warning of such serious dissension. This
concerned him, too, hinting as it did of an organized opposition waiting
for the right moment to reveal themselves and kill the treaty. Now that
China was entering the capitalist world, it was inevitable that some in
government would be determined to destroy it to preserve their own
dominance.