Checkmate (23 page)

“I’ll look into it, Sam, but you know what they’re likely to say.”

“Pull some strings.”

A chime sounded at the Situation Room’s door. Lambert pushed a button on the table; with a buzz, the cypher lock disengaged. Tom Richards walked in and sat down. “I’m short on time, so I’ll get to it: The sample you brought back from Chernobyl is a perfect match with what we found aboard the
Trego
and at Slipstone. No question.”

“Where does that leave us?” Lambert asked.

“The President is scheduled to speak to the nation tonight. An hour before that, he’ll be meeting with the ambassadors for the Russian Federation and Ukraine. The message will be simple: Either by negligence or complicity, Moscow and Kiev are each equally responsible for failing to properly secure the material used in the attacks.”

Richards’s words were clearly based on the talking points the public would hear again and again in the coming weeks from senators, representatives, and White House and Pentagon officials. This shot across Russia’s and Ukraine’s bow was as much an accusation as it was a warning: Don’t interfere in what’s coming.

The question was: Was it too late to stop the machine before shots were fired?

“Those are pretty broad strokes, Tom,” Lambert said.

“The evidence supports it. The material came from Chernobyl—probably sold by that now-retired Army area commander—and it ended aboard a ship set on a collision course with our shores and in the water supply of one of our towns. At last count, over four thousand people are dead in Slipstone. Someone’s going to answer for that.”

“You still haven’t answered my original question,” Lambert said. “Where does all this leave us? Until I hear otherwise, I’m going to assume the President’s order still stands. We’re still on-mission.”

Richards shrugged. “That’s above my pay grade, Colonel. I serve at the President’s pleasure.”

“As do we all. Now spare me party line, Tom. What’s the feeling at Langley?”

Richards closed his briefing folder and leaned back. “The case is solid. Almost airtight. But there’s a feeling on our side—on the Ops side—that we’re missing something.”

“Join the club,” Fisher replied.

“Here’s my problem. Taken together, the
Trego
and Slipstone operations were far more complex than what happened on 9/11. The level of operational sophistication and financial backing required for this was enormous. To me, that usually means state-sponsored. But I can’t shake the feeling we caught these guys a little too easily—maybe not the guy aboard the
Trego,
but the Slipstone suspects for sure. They were sloppy. Slow. Didn’t have a layered exfiltration plan in place. The disparity between the operation itself and the way these guys behaved afterward is disturbing.”

Grimsdottir said, “Maybe Tehran wanted them caught. That leaves them the option to either deny involvement or claim credit, depending which way the wind is blowing.”

“We’ve thought of that,” Richards said. “In the end, though, all out speculation changes nothing. Countries have gone to war with less provocation and evidence. We’ve got the support of the Congress, the United Nations, and most of the world.” Richards checked his watch, then gathered his folder and stood up.

Lambert said, “Thanks for coming by, Tom.”

“My pleasure. Good work, all of you.”

After Richards was gone, Lambert said, “You heard the man: The clock is ticking. After the President’s address tonight, we’re on the eve of war. Have we got anything to suggest that’s the wrong course?”

Grimsdottir cleared her throat. “I might.”

“
WE’RE
all ears,” Lambert said.

“It’s ironic, really,” Grimsdottir said. “Whoever tried to erase the hard drive before it was returned to Excelsior did a decent job—or would have, if not for Greenhorn’s firewall. It protected not only a chunk of the drive for itself, but a buffer zone, too. That’s where I found this.”

She held up a computer printout that looked to Fisher like nothing more than a series of random numbers separated by colons, periods, and semicolons. There was, however, a highlighted portion that looked generically familiar:

207.142.131.247

“It’s an IP address,” Fisher said.

An IP, or Internet Protocol, address is a unique identifier assigned to any network device—from routers to servers to desktops to fax machines.

“A gold star for Mr. Fisher,” Grimsdottir said. “This is the best clue we could have gotten. This particular IP led me to a service provider in Hong Kong, which in turn led me to an e-mail account, which finally led me to a mother company called Shinzhan Network Solutions based in Shanghai. Shinzhan specializes in wireless satellite Internet service.

“According their records, this account beams a broadband five-megabyte signal to an island off the coast of China called Cezi Maji.” At this, Grimsdottir paused and looked at each of them in turn. “Nothing? That name doesn’t ring any bells?”

Fisher and Lambert both shook their heads.

“Cezi Maji is the island that Bai Kang Shek allegedly disappeared to fifteen years ago.”

Fisher leaned forward. “Say again?”

“Bai Kang Shek. That’s his island—or so the legend goes.”

Fisher was as surprised to simply hear a Chinese name reappear in the puzzle as he was to hear that name in particular.

Bai Kang Shek had been called the Howard Hughes of China. In the late 1930s, Shek’s father had owned a small fleet of tugboats in Shanghai. After World War II, as China tried to restart its devastated economy and infrastructure, Shek Senior had gone to the government with a proposal: Give me exclusive salvage rights on all shipping sunk during the war in the East and South China Seas. In return, Shek Senior would sell back to China the scrap metal it so desperately needed.

A bargain was struck and the Shek family went to work, including young Bai Kang, who served first as a deckhand aboard his father’s tug, then as a mate, then finally as a captain at the age of sixteen.

By the time Shek Senior retired and handed over the reigns to Bai Kang in 1956, the empire had expanded from salvage work into transport, manufacturing, arms production, agriculture, and mining.

For the next forty years, Shek stood at the helm of Shek International as the business grew. In 1990 Shek’s personal net worth was estimated at six billion dollars. Then, one year later, as if someone had flipped a switch, Bai Kang Shek changed.

His behavior became erratic. He was prone to outbursts; he decreed that board members must wear hats during meetings; he began moving from place to place, staying in one of his dozens of homes for precisely eleven days before moving on to the next; he was said to have given up solid food, taking his meals only in blended form. The list went on.

Several times the board tried to wrest control of the the business from him, but despite his growing eccentricities, he remained formidable and able. Though his personal behavior grew more bizarre by the day, his mind for business never faltered as Shek International continued to show record profits.

And then suddenly in 1991, Shek called a rare press conference. Dressed in a long-tailed tuxedo and carrying a cane, Shek announced to the world that he was retiring to pursue “spiritual endeavors” and that he had sold his stake in Shek International to the board for what amounted to sixteen U.S. dollars. Then he clumsily turned his cane into a bouquet of flowers, bowed to the assemblage, and left. The last time he was seen or photographed was as he climbed into his limousine and was driven away.

For the past fifteen years the rumors and tales of conspiracies surrounding Bai Kang Shek had grown to mythic proportions, but through them all was a common thread: He was still alive, sequestered from the world in some private sanctuary.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Fisher said. “I’m glad we’ve finally got something that supports my hunch, but the idea that our best suspect is someone who used to wear gold-sequined swim goggles in public makes me a little nervous.”

“Ditto,” Lambert said.

Grimsdottir spread her hands. “All I can give you are the facts: The engines aboard the
Trego
were purchased by Song Woo International, which has an account with Shinzhan Network Solutions, and that same account is paying for satellite Internet access for the island of Cezi Maji in the East China Sea.

“Which in turn may or may not be home to a recluse, who may or may not be insane, and who may or may not be alive,” Fisher said.

“That’s about the size of it,” Grimsdottir said. “Except one last detail.” She clicked the remote at a nearby flat-screen; the image of a heavily jungled island appeared. “According to reliable reports, Cezi Maji has a security system worthy of a military base: patrol boats, sensors, armed guards, and fences. Whether that’s Bai Kang Shek out there or not, I don’t know, but somebody’s pretty serious about their privacy.”

Fisher stared at the image for a few seconds, then said, “Sounds like an invitation to me.”

THREE
hours and one midair refueling after leaving Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, the Pave Low’s pilot slowed the craft to a hover. The vibration that had been been jarring Fisher’s butt and back for the last six hundred miles diminished to a tremor. The pilot’s voice came over Fisher’s subdermal. “Sir, we’re at the rendevous point.”

“Radio contact?”

“None. We’ll wait them out. You know how squids are; probably got lost.”

“Play nice, Major.” Fisher checked his watch. They were on time; the submarine was late. “How’s your fuel?”

“We’re good. Thanks to whatever mojo you’re carrying, we’ve got a Comet all to ourselves.”

“Comet” was short for Vomit Comet, the nickname for the KC-135 Stratotanker, which did double duty as an in-flight refueling aircraft and a zero-g simulator for astronauts—the latter achieved through rapid climbs and sudden dives that left the occupants weightless and often violently nauseous. Currently, a Stratotanker from Kadena was orbiting above them at 35,000 feet, waiting to top off the helo should it become necessary.

Seated across from him on the bench were the Pave Low’s two gunners/specialists. As they had been for the last hour, they were engrossed in a game of gin. Accustomed to ferrying dangerous men into dangerous areas, Pave Low crew members took everything in stride and didn’t ask questions. Aside from a nod as Fisher had climbed aboard, neither man had paid him any attention.

The MH-53J Pave Low was a special operator’s dream. Designed to covertly insert soldiers into denied areas, and then extract them out again, it was fast, quiet, and equipped with an avionics package that left nothing to chance: FLIR (Forward-Looking Infrared Radar), inertial global positioning system (GPS), terrain-following and terrain-avoidance radar.

Fisher glanced out the window. The helo’s navigation strobes were turned off, but thanks to a full moon he could see the ocean twenty feet below, its surface chopped into mist by the rotor wash. This was another Pave Low specialty—the hover coupler, which, in conjunction with the GPS, could keep the helo fixed precisely over a spot on the earth, give or take six inches.

Ten minutes later, the pilot was back in Fisher’s subdermal: “We’ve got company, sir. Marlin is on station, ready for pickup.”

“Roger,” Fisher said. “Tell them five minutes.”

“What’s your pleasure?”

“Ten feet will do. Don’t wait around.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yep, go home. Thanks for the ride.”

He caught the attention of the two specialists, then pointed to himself and jerked a thumb downward. They went into action. The cabin lights were switched to red and life vests were donned. The first crewman motioned for Fisher to stand up and turn around for gear inspection, then patted him once on the shoulder.

The second crewman slid open the cabin door. Legs braced at the threshhold, one arm braced across the door, he motioned Fisher forward. Fisher felt the
whump-whump-whump
of the Pave Low’s rotors in his belly. Cold mist blew through the door and he tasted salt on his lips.

At the door, the crewman cupped his subdermal against his ear, then said something into the microphone. He flashed five fingers at Fisher once, then again, then laid his palm flat:
Steady hover at ten feet
.

Fisher nodded.

The second crewman pulled a chem-light from his vest, broke it open, and shook it until started glowing green, then tossed it out the door. It hit the water and started bobbing in the chop. In the darkness, the glow would give Fisher a reference point for his jump. The crewman at the door stood aside and gave Fisher an “after you” flourish.

 

 

 

BODY
vertical, arms crossed over his chest, he plunged into the dark water. The thumping of the Pave Low’s rotors became muffled, and for a brief second Fisher allowed himself to enjoy the quiet before finning to the surface. He raised a thumb above his head. The red rectangle of light that was the Pave Low’s side door went dark as the crewman closed it. The helo lifted up, banked left, and skimmed away into the darkness.

Somewhere to his right, Fisher heard a rush of bubbles followed by a hissing whoosh. Thirty seconds later, a dot of light appeared in the darkness; it blinked once, then twice more. Fisher swam toward it.

 

 

 

THE
Los Angeles-class submarine USS
Houston,
SSN- 713, call sign Marlin, was sitting low in the water, deck partially awash, its sail looming out of the darkness like a two-story-tall building. A seaman was crouched on the deck at the head of a rope ladder. Fisher climbed up. If the crewman was fazed by picking up a lone man in the middle of the East China Sea, he showed no sign of it.

“Captain’s compliments, sir. If you’ll follow me.”