The Einstein Papers (7 page)

“They’re okay,” Choi stammered, still somewhat in shock.

“Good. Climb in,” Taft said, wading in the river. Then he tossed the shovel inside and pulled the stem farther into the current.

“You ride in front,” he said to Choi.

Choi settled into the bow as Taft, dripping water, climbed over the side at the stern. He settled into the seat and pulled the rope start for the motor. Firing on the first pull, it quietly settled into a low rumble.

Taft flicked the reverse gear on the motor body and backed the raft into the current. As the force of the current flipped the bow around and downstream, he flipped the gear box into forward and began to steer the raft downstream. In a matter of three minutes’ time the raft was approaching speeds of thirty miles an hour.

Wrapping his arm around the tiller, Taft pushed a series of buttons on his watch again. When he finished, he throttled the outboard to full speed. The wind from the raft shooting downstream was whipping Choi’s hair as he turned in his bow seat and glanced back at Taft. The American was staring straight downriver. A dull glow was emanating from his icy blue eyes as he steered the raft carefully through the narrow rock canyons.

Although Choi could not hear over the muffled roar of the engine and the sound of the water slapping against the hull, Taft’s lips were pursed.

It appeared he was whistling.

In the nerve center of the Qinghai facility it was absolute chaos. The portable radios carried by the guards were powered by batteries, so they could still communicate with each other, but the power surge that occurred when the transformers exploded had fried the main radio terminal. Those in command were having a tough time making their wishes heard.

It was nearly an hour before the guards could be organized.

One hour and twenty minutes after the explosion, as Taft and Choi were speeding down the Shule River in the outboard-powered raft, a guard finally made his way to Choi’s cell.

“Zhou, wake up,” the relief guard, Ping Chowluk, said, shaking the lifeless guard who lay on the concrete.

Rolling Zhou to his back caused the dead guard’s head to flop to one side. Ping noticed the purple bruise on the side of Zhou’s face where his blood had settled after death. Zhou’s tongue was thrust through his teeth in a death grimace. The body was already cooling.

When Ping approached Choi’s cell, he found the door slightly ajar. He pushed it open and peered inside.

The cell was empty. Choi was nowhere to be seen.

Running down the hall, Ping swooped his hand down and picked up a piece of paper. He dashed up the stairs leading outside and sprinted across the courtyard to the main security office for the Qinghai Advanced Weapons Facility. Bursting inside the office, he shouted to Hu Jimn, the officer in charge.

“Zhou is dead,” Ping said, panting from the run, “and Choi has escaped.”

“That bastard,” Jimn grunted. “The power surge from the earthquake must have unlocked his cell door. Let’s just hope he didn’t get far.”

Jimn rolled his chair across the tile floor to the back-up communications radio and began to issue orders into a microphone. “All guards outside. Begin a sweep of the fence perimeter, we have a missing prisoner.” Jimn then switched channels and spoke again. “Chang!” he shouted into the microphone.

Jimn’s second-in-command, Chang Yibo, answered instantly. “Yes sir.”

“Where are you right now?”

“Enrichment facility one,” Yibo said into his handheld radio.

“Go to the barracks and wake all the off-duty guards. I want you to divide the men into groups of two to search all the buildings from top to bottom,” Jimn shouted.

“What are we looking for?” Yibo asked.

“The scientist Choi has escaped,” Jimn said.

“Do you think he’s still on the property?” Yibo asked.

“We have no way of knowing until we search,” Jimn said loudly.

Turning back to Ping, he asked, “Did you notice anything unusual in Choi’s cell?”

“Only this, but it was in the hallway outside,” Ping said.

He handed Jimn the British five-pound note he had picked up from the hallway outside the cell.

“Odd,” Jimn said quietly as he pocketed the note. Then he returned to radioing instructions to the search teams.

Half of the buildings at the Qinghai Advanced Weapons Facility had been searched when one of the guards walking the fence perimeter radioed Jimn that he had found a hole scooped out under the outer fence.

“Do you see tracks?” Jimn asked.

“Yes sir,” the guard quickly replied.

Jimn ran from the security office, arriving at the hole in a matter of minutes.

“There were tumbleweeds placed over the opening. Our dog dug them out,” the guard told Jimn.

Jimn slipped under the fence and followed the footprints for a few yards to the east. Shining his flashlight on the larger footprints, he examined the sole markings carefully.

“Get someone to make a plaster mold of these immediately,” Jimn shouted back across the fence to the guard.

Jimn stood staring into the distance as the guard, dragging the dog along, ran toward the security office.

Chang Yibo had left the office building he was searching when he heard of the discovery of the hole over his radio. He slipped under the fence and joined Jimn, who was staring down at the prints.

“What do you make of it, sir?” Yibo asked.

“The smaller prints must be Choi’s,” Jimn said. “They are of the type made by the slippers we give prisoners. The larger set appears to be made by a pair of British paratrooper boots. I can make out the words ‘Clark’s-London’ and the size.”

“What is the size?” Yibo asked.

“Size twelve,” Jimn said. “There can’t be many Chinese people with that size near here. Assemble a group of trucks, dogs, and trackers. I want you to follow these prints and recapture Choi.”

“What shall we do if he’s with the Brit?” Yibo asked.

“Bring them both to me,” Jimn said quietly. “I will deal with the Brit”

Taft glanced at the GPS. The unit’s screen cast a faint green glow in the black night and he held it close to his face to read the numbers. Once he had established their position, he steered the inflatable a few miles farther downstream, then pulled to the shore.

In the last few hours, the pair had traveled nearly a hundred and twenty miles west. The sky to the east was starting to lighten with the coming sunrise as Taft grounded the raft on shore.

“Time to get out,” he said to Choi.

Climbing onto the riverbank, Taft unscrewed the engine from the transom and placed it in the middle of the raft. He slit the sides of the raft with a black carbon composite knife and pushed it back into the water. It drifted a short distance, then began to sink.

Brushing the sand from his hands, he turned to Choi. “Feel like a crisp morning jog?”

“Not particularly,” Choi said wearily.

Taft scrutinized the tiny scientist carefully. “How much do you weigh?”

“Fifty kilos,” Choi said.

“What’s that, about a hundred and ten pounds?”

“Exactly,” Choi said.

Taft reached into the pack and removed a small tin of pills and a canteen of water. “Take one of these.”

Choi took the pill and stared at it in the dim light. “What is it?’

“Good old American amphetamines. Swallow that little pill and you’ll be able to run to the western border,” Taft said, smiling faintly.

Choi washed the pill down with a sip from the canteen. “What next, Mr. Taft?”

“My friends call me John,” Taft said.

“You consider me your friend?”

“As long as you don’t get me captured or killed,” Taft said. “Now follow me, we have to catch the morning train.”

Without another word Taft trotted down the river a distance to throw off any trackers, then climbed the riverbank and began walking quickly toward the north. Choi followed close behind-like a lemming following the pack off a cliff.

“The tracks end at the Shule River about two kilometers from the fence,” Yibo said to Jimn over the portable radio.

“Have your men wade across the water and search the opposite side for footprints. They might be trying to throw off the scent of the dogs,” Jimn said. “I have a helicopter coming. Signal the pilot with your flashlight when you hear the rotor blades.”

“Very good, sir,” Yibo said.

Choi stood next to Taft in the shadow of a rusting metal trestle bridge. They watched in the distance as an old steam locomotive approached from the west. Far to the rear of the locomotive, like a string to the heavens, trailed a thick cloud of black coal smoke.

The wagon path running across the trestle bridge was thankfully deserted. Taft and Choi were now so deep in the vast wasteland of the Gobi Desert that goats outnumbered people by two hundred to one. It was very doubtful they would be spotted by any Chinese citizens.

“Stay out of sight until I tell you to move,” Taft said, staring into Choi’s eyes. “When I signal you, we will climb to the top of the bridge then leap off onto the top of the train.”

Most of Choi’s life had been spent sitting at a desk staring at equations. His idea of an adventure was ordering takeout pizza. Still, the amphetamines were coursing through his blood, and he grinned at Taft in the morning cold. “Okay, whatever you say,” he said loudly.

Taft stared at the tiny scientist. “I may have miscalculated the dosage of the amphetamines. Are you okay?”

“Sure,” Choi answered quickly.

“Rock and roll, my little scientist friend,” Taft said with a chuckle.

The locomotive was passing under the bridge. Taft waited for a few seconds until a third of the train had passed, then motioned for Choi to climb the bank and get into position to jump. Choi watched as the ancient cargo train thundered past, then turned to Taft. “Just who do you work for?”

“I work for the United States government. And believe it or not, I’m here to help,” Taft said as he wrapped his arms around the tiny scientist. Holding Choi tight, he leapt from the bridge. The pair slammed onto the roof of the cargo car with a dull thud. Checking Choi and finding him uninjured, Taft motioned to the ladder that would take them inside the car.

The sound of rotor blades broke the quiet of the morning outside Qinghai. The approaching Chinese-built SA 365 Dauphin helicopter was as advanced in its design as those built in the West. Constructed under a French license, the craft featured a completely enclosed Fenestron tail rotor and streamlined front glass bubble. The twin-engined SA 365 was fast and smooth flying.

At the sound of the approaching helicopter, Yibo signaled the pilot with his flashlight. The Dauphin turned and slowed, landing in a cloud of dust. Yibo ran over to the helicopter while the rotors were still spinning.

“Which way?” the pilot shouted over the noise of the engines.

“Up the river fifty miles first,” Yibo answered over the increasing noise as the pilot prepared to lift off.

Eighteen minutes later, just as the sun began to rise over the line of mountains in the distance, Yibo was scanning the ground through a pair of West German binoculars.

“We’re just crossing the fifty-mile point!” the pilot shouted.

“Then turn around and fly downstream from where we started,” Yibo shouted across the cockpit.

“How far?” the pilot asked.

“Until we find something,” Yibo replied, continuing to scan the ground.

Over an hour later, nearly two hundred miles downstream, Yibo called to the pilot, “Hover over the river, I see something in the water to the left.”

The pilot lowered the helicopter until it was hovering over a black object stuck on a log wedged at a bend in the river.

“Drop me on the bank. I need to examine that object,” Yibo shouted to the pilot.

As soon as the helicopter touched down, Yibo ran to the water and waded in. Lifting the edge of the object, he saw it was a raft. From inside he removed the small outboard engine. After reading the brand name he carried the motor to shore. Wading back into the water, he dragged the raft from the log and arranged raft and motor together on the riverbank. Then he returned to the helicopter.

“Fly directly down the river at a slow speed. We are searching for a pair of footprints,” he shouted to the pilot.

Six minutes later the pilot spotted the tracks.

To anyone driving past on the road, the three-story office building on the outskirts of Bethesda, Maryland, appeared innocuous, bland, uninspiring. An eight-by-six-foot sign set atop a brick planter that read CAPCO MINING was the only indication as to the nature of the business inside. Anyone stopping and wandering into the building would never notice the advanced security measures the building featured.

Visitors were under surveillance by video cameras hidden in the trees from the time they turned off the main road until they reached the parking lot. The video surveillance continued once they left their car and approached the building. Once inside the lobby, few would notice the tinted, bulletproof glass, and no one but an expert in security would recognize that the entire lobby had reinforced walls and support beams that could withstand all but the most powerful bomb blast.

If a threat were detected, the security guards stationed at the lobby desk could seal off the lobby with a push of a button. A few seconds later, after the guards had placed gas masks over their faces, the entire lobby would be misted with a gas that rendered anyone in the lobby unconscious in less than three seconds.

There was little that could be done to the outside of the building to defend against a suicide bomber driving a vehicle loaded with explosives. However, the grounds outside the building, numerous locations on the street, as well as the parking lot were outfitted with hidden barriers that rose hydraulically when activated. Designed to shred the tires and hook the rims of any vehicle that posed a threat, it made the building impervious to anything short of an assault by tank.

The security measures might seem extreme for an ordinary business concern, but Capco Mining was a mining company in name only. The Capco building outside Bethesda housed the National Intelligence Agency, the smallest of the United States intelligence organizations. The NIA reported directly to the National Security Council, and its primary mandate was antiterrorist activities.