The Einstein Papers (14 page)

Jimn feared his family would never be released from jail.

His motel room was old and badly in need of remodeling. The Formica on the dresser was chipped, the paint on the walls stained and spotted. The carpeting on the floor was threadbare, the single vinyl chair near the wobbly table torn. A strange smell of stale liquor, cigarette smoke, and fear permeated the room.

Jimn stared bleakly at the television. The picture tube was ancient, the colors bleeding into one another. The noon news anchor, her hair a mysterious shade of orange, was reporting the shooting of the security guard at Princeton University.

Averting his eyes to avoid watching the guard being removed from the scene, Jimn noticed a peculiar dark stain on the ceiling. Why was I ordered to stay in such a dump, he thought to himself?

He rubbed his eyes with his fingers.

Jimn was depressed-both by his surroundings and the news broadcast. The last thing he had wanted was to kill someone in the United States. Not that killing was abhorrent to him, he had participated in his share of torture and executions, but he knew that his superiors would see the shooting as another failure by him.

Jimn decided to grab a moment of fresh air. He walked down the hall to the soft-drink machine to buy a soda. He had been ordered by his handlers in Beijing to stay at the motel until he was contacted with further instructions, but that didn’t require him to remain inside the room at all times, he thought.

After the soda I will order myself lunch to be delivered. Perhaps an American pizza. I think it’s safe to celebrate the acquisition of the diaries at least, Jimn thought.

Jimn walked down the hall to the soda machine. Finding he was short of the change he needed, he went to the office and asked the manager to break a dollar bill. Turning away from an episode of The People’s Court, the man changed the bill without a word.

As he exited the office, jingling the quarters in his hand, Jimn happened to glance toward his room. A man with his back toward Jimn was opening the door with a key. Jimn stared, not yet registering what he was witnessing.

The sound of an automobile horn in the parking lot broke Jimn’s concentration. Now inside the room, the man ran out at the sound of his partners signal. Jimn, still standing near the office, watched as a second man got out of the car and began to run toward him. Both men held pistols in their hands.

They’re here to kill me, Jimn realized instantly. Dropping the change, he turned and sprinted across the parking lot and into the street. Several cars swerved to avoid striking him as he dashed blindly across the roadway. Jimn knew that the killers had been sent by the Chinese government. He knew because he now recognized the man who had entered his room. Jimn had trained him himself.

Across the street from the motel, Jimn ducked as a bullet shattered a neon soft-drink sign on the side of a coffee shop fronting the road. As Jimn ran past the front door of the restaurant, which was filled with lunchtime diners, a second bullet struck and shattered the glass in a newspaper machine directly in front of him.

He raised his arm to cover his face. A spear of glass from the display window cut into his leg. A third bullet entered Jimn’s back, nicking his lung. As the sound of the approaching sirens increased, Jimn continued to run. Exiting the restaurant’s parking lot, he found himself at the edge of an open field along Newark Bay. He mounted the concrete breakwater that formed a wall along the water’s edge and began running south.

The sirens were almost upon them as one of the Chinese assassins stopped and carefully aimed. Squeezing the trigger, he watched as his round hit Jimn, flinging him into the dirty water of the bay.

The police now very near, the assassins disappeared into the shadows. For so blatant a shooting there were few witnesses. Jimn floated facedown in the filthy water, a trail of blood leaking from his body marking the spot, as the first police car pulled into the field next to the coffee shop.

That same day, Taft leaned against the nondescript sedan he had checked out of the NIA motor pool earlier that morning. He was chewing on a stem of grass. They were parked two miles north of Potomac Beach, Virginia, along the Potomac River. The location was forty-seven miles south of the NIA offices. Tossing the stem of grass to the ground, he looked at his partner.

“I always enjoy fall,” he said to Martinez.

“A little cooler and not so humid,” replied Martinez.

“It always seems to be a time for reflection.”

Martinez sat upright and slid off the hood of the sedan. “John Taft trying to be philosophical with me?” he said. “Will wonders never cease?”

“Every time I try to take our conversations to a deeper level you turn me away,” Taft said sarcastically.

“Only because I know you so well,” Martinez said. He began to walk across the dirt parking lot toward the river. “I’ll leave any deep thinking to you. I just want a paycheck.”

“What, and you think I’m motivated by a higher calling? I quit believing in this shit we do years ago.” Taft kicked an aluminum beer can toward Martinez. “Put on your serious face, partner, it’s time to be NIA secret agents,” Taft said quietly as a man began walking toward them. “Let’s just play along and get this over with. Then we can go grab something to eat.”

“I still don’t know how we got assigned this detail. This contractor could care less about our being here,” Martinez said, watching the man approach.

“Benson has me on light work, remember? He’s worried I’ve been working too hard-claims I might burn out again.”

“You must be from the NIA,” the contractor said, stopping in front of the men.

His head was crowned with a white hard hat. His lips were spread in a smile. Sticking out a slab-like paw, he shook hands with the pair. “Let’s get you some hats and we can start the tour. I think you’ll be impressed.”

He led them to a construction trailer, where he found hard hats for Taft and Martinez. Stepping around a mud puddle, they walked toward the rivers edge. At the edge of a row of trees was a concrete building about the size of a four-car garage.

“The electronics that form the heart of this installation are still being sorted out, but let me give you the ten-dollar tour,” the contractor said as he opened the door and led them inside. “It works like this. Sensors are buried underground, pointing toward the water. These, along with the set on the opposite shore, can completely cover the river with ease.”

Several screens lit up and began to display readings from the multitude of sensors. The screens featured bar graphs as well as colored displays. A banner ran across the top giving a written assessment of anything that passed either on top of or below the water.

Taft and Martinez watched the display with interest as a school of fish passed downstream.

“Is it fully automatic?” Martinez asked.

“Not yet. Eventually the signals will be sent to the NSA at Fort Meade and recorded on tape. Unless the river is breached by something the system determines to be dangerous, it will work silently and automatically. At start-up, however, we will have technicians here on site in case there’s a problem.”

“What happens if a submerged object tries to come up the river?” Taft asked.

“Increasing intensity alarms alert the NSA. Then they will immediately contact the Marine base at Quantico,” the contractor said proudly.

“Looks like a good system,” Martinez said.

“The software will be sorted out over the next few weeks. I’m sure we’ll be able to meet the October 15th deadline without a problem,” the contractor noted. “So, do we get a positive report?”

“I don’t see why not,” Taft said. “We’ll fill our agency in on your progress. You don’t have to follow us out-we can drop off the hard hats on our way.”

“Fair enough,” the contractor said, returning to his work. “I guess that’s about it.”

Taft and Martinez returned the hard hats to the hooks on the wall of the trailer. Taft paused in the office long enough to fill a conical paper cup from the water cooler, slurp the cold liquid, then toss the wadded-up cup across the room into a trash can.

Two points,” he said as he opened the door and, followed by Martinez, exited the trailer.

The pair continued across the dirt to their company car. Taft slid behind the wheel and twisted the key as Martinez settled down in the passenger seat.

“Who came up with the idea that terrorists might try to take submarines up United States rivers?”

“Some asshole Senate subcommittee,” Martinez answered. “They fear that submarines or pleasure boats with explosives attached or dragged behind could be brought up the Potomac. What will they think of next?”

“It figures,” Taft said. “We could accomplish the same outcome with a metal net stretched across the river. Another waste of time and money.”

“I think the general is just giving you a break after you made the world safe for scientists,” Martinez said smugly.

“You can be a real smart-ass, Larry,” Taft said, then changed the subject. “Do you want to stop and eat?”

Martinez nodded, then rolled his window down to spit.

“I sure would like to know the whole story behind that physicist Choi,” Taft said as he set the cruise control and leaned back. “The rumor I heard today is that the Chinese have a million-dollar bounty on his head.”

“The Chinese are becoming a giant problem for our side,” Martinez noted.

Taft began to scan the billboards for a restaurant. “So?” he said to his partner as he pulled into a diner. “So, are you privy to what the theory’s all about?”

“I know it’s called the Unified Field Theory,” Martinez said. “And for something that’s been around for decades, it’s suddenly very important.”

“That’s it?”

“That and some people think it could be used to make one hell of a weapon.”

“Well,” Taft said, “that makes me feel a little better.”

“Food would make me feel a lot better,” Martinez said as he climbed from the car and began walking toward the door of the diner.

On the top floor of the National Intelligence Agency, General Earl Benson sat in his silent office. The walls, windows, ceiling, and floors were covered with layers of metal, Kevlar cloth, and crushed iron ore to deflect all attempts at monitoring. Computer-controlled heating and air-conditioning kept the office at a constant temperature.

His first few years in this office Benson wanted nothing more than to escape. During his twenty-six years in the army, where he rose in rank to a three-star general before retiring, Benson had always enjoyed commanding his men in the field. He still missed the feeling of being outside.

For someone used to the outdoors, his office felt like a tomb, sterile and unfeeling. At every opportunity he walked the halls of the NLA, checking on his men. In violation of protocol, he also took every opportunity to leave his office door open. Over the last several years, Benson had grown more accustomed to the quiet, and to a sense of containment, but he still didn’t like it. He welcomed every interruption.

Benson’s secretary, Mrs. Mindio, buzzed his phone and waited for the general to answer. He picked up almost immediately.

“Benson.”

“This is Colonel Thompson at the National Security Agency. Your agency filled out a priority scan on a man named Hu Jimn?”

It was standard NIA policy. To keep abreast of mission developments after the fact, all the names of the principles his agents had contact with-or “actors,” as the agency referred to them-were delivered by courier to the NSA. If, within the specified period of time, the person was mentioned in any electronic medium, the computers at the NSA would flag it and spit it out.

“That’s correct,” Benson said.

“The National Crime Information Computer just ran a check on him for the Newark police,” said Thompson.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. Even the description you gave us matches the profile the police filed.”

Thanks for the tip. Are you still monitoring electronic transmissions from the Chinese embassies?” Benson asked.

“We are, but we have nothing to report yet,” Thompson said, and then signed off.

Benson raced from behind his desk and opened his office door. Mrs. Mindio, Benson’s assistant for the last ten years, sat knitting a pair of baby booties. “Who’s on point?”

Mrs. Mindio scanned the list by her telephone. “Rienhart and Gold were just called to investigate a bomb threat at JFK’s grave,” she said calmly, referring again to the sheet. “That makes the point team …Taft and Martinez.”

“I sent them down to do a construction inspection on a new intelligence facility south of here,” Benson said. “They should be done by now. Please beep them and have them call me back on a secure phone.”

“Yes, General,” Mrs. Mindio said as she began dialing.

Taft was eating a Reuben sandwich and sipping an iced tea inside a diner that looked like it hadn’t been remodeled since it was built thirty years ago. He stuffed a blob of stray sauerkraut back inside the bread with the tip of his finger. “That’s some wild stuff about Einstein. So our side thinks the Chinese are making progress on this Unified Field Theory.”

“I guess Choi wrote the definitive paper about it. He was in the process of being hired by a United States Government think tank when he was snatched. The idea is…” Martinez began.

“Hold that thought. My beeper just went off,” Taft interrupted as his watch began vibrating.

He found the diner’s pay phone and dialed the number to the NIA.

“The general requests you to call him immediately from a secure phone,” Mrs. Mindio said.

“Right away,” Taft said as he gestured to Martinez to have the food wrapped to go.

Outside, Taft unlocked the NIA sedan, pushed the button to open the trunk, then walked back and removed a briefcase. He opened the case and switched on the phone. It took several seconds to hook to a satellite with a scrambled signal. Taft waited as the red light switched to green, signaling the phone was ready to use. Climbing into the drivers seat, he dialed Benson’s office number. Martinez walked from the restaurant, carrying a sack with their lunch, just as the call went through.