Lethal Circuit (17 page)

As he kissed her, harder still, Kate reached for him, her body sliding ever closer until he was locked in her warm embrace. Michael lifted her toward him, Kate’s feet arched against the walls of the shower stall. He could feel the pressure building inside of him and he knew it was building in her too as she pulsed against him. Kate must have sensed when the anticipation was too much to bear because she reached for him, guiding him urgently inside of her. In that instant Michael knew that whatever concerns he had about Kate, about China, about anything, would have to wait. Nothing mattered now but the moment. He pulled her tight to him and all that was left was the rhythmic motion of their bodies in the night.

27

S
UNLIGHT
DANCING
OVER
his sleeping bag, Michael awoke with a smile. He didn’t want to say it out loud, but he could admit it to himself. Laying there, Kate’s long auburn hair draped across his chest, he felt like a real Backpacker Bond. A Backpacker Bond on a mission for his Majesty’s Secret Service. Granted, Michael was American. And his idea of a vodka martini included a shot of Red Bull. But for the moment at least, he was a secret agent and he had to admit, it felt good. Bond or not, though, he knew that they had too big a day ahead of them to be simply lounging in bed. It couldn’t be past six a.m., but the sounds of early morning sweeping were already rising from the street below. Time to get up. Michael shifted his weight carefully, not wanting to wake Kate before he was dressed, but she stirred almost immediately.

“Modest?”

“Just eager.”

“Me too,” she said, pulling him back toward her.

“Not for that,” he said kissing her deeply. “Not right now anyway.”

“For what then?” Kate asked as Michael hastily threw on his pants.

“A second look.”

“A
SECOND
LOO
k,” in Michael-speak meant re-examining the capsule. He had been mulling over it for some time now and it seemed to Michael that the saucer shaped shell had to be more than it seemed. Otherwise why build it? A marker to the location of the Horten could be left in far simpler ways. After carefully ensuring that they were alone atop the roof of the hostel, Michael bent low to remove the padlock from the hinged cowling covering the swamp fan. Kate hunched down beside him as he lifted the sheet metal with a grating squeak. The capsule was there, exactly as they had left it, glimmering in the morning light. Michael ran his fingers along the circumference of the metal disc looking for a catch or an indentation, anything really that would either open it up, or set his suspicions to rest, but nothing did. The four-foot-diameter capsule was exactly as it had been the night before
—
the perfect enigma. Or was it?

“Did you see that?” Michael said.

“See what?”

Michael placed his palm under the capsule and tilted it away from the direct sunlight.

“Squint a little and hold your head at an angle.”

Kate craned her neck to the side, staring across the diameter of the capsule. A hairline indentation was just visible on the capsule’s smooth surface.

“That wasn’t there yesterday.”

“Not under a forty watt bulb anyway,” Michael said, excited now, following the barely visible hairline groove with the tip of his finger as it radiated out from the center point along the diameter of the capsule. Michael checked over either shoulder to ensure that they were the only ones on the roof. He then lifted the capsule entirely out of the cowling and set it on end between his knees as he crouched, putting the full weight of his upper body into torquing it around.

Nothing happened.

Michael took a breath and grunted, the muscles in his arms and back straining as he tried to twist the capsule in half for a second time. Still nothing happened. If it was going to give, it had no intention of doing so gracefully. But Michael had no intention of giving up either. Eclipsing his previous attempts with the sheer force in his grip, Michael grasped the capsule between his knees and twisted for a third time, this time putting his hips and legs into the action. Like the previous attempts, at first there was nothing, but then, a low groan emanated from the core of the capsule itself. It wasn’t music, but it certainly sounded like it as Michael continued to twist, the low torque of metal moving on metal filling the morning air until the seal gave away with a neat pop. After that, the top half of the capsule spun off as easily as the lid on a pickle jar. Within moments Michael had laid the now separated halves of the capsule down on the tar roof revealing a cavity within. He turned the lower half of the capsule on its side and a second later a metallic green box tumbled out of the cavity into his waiting hand.

“Gotcha,” Michael said, pausing to regain his breath. His eyes met Kate’s. It didn’t take a genius to see that she knew what it was.

“Purple Sky.”

“Purple what?”

Kate turned the anodized green box over, exposing the sheath of color coded wires that hung loose behind it.

“If I’m right it’s a communications device circa 1942. Its code name was Purple Sky.”

“It’s green.”

“I’d call it more of a chartreuse, but yeah, it’s green. The name referred to what the device did, not what it looked like.”

“Which was?”

“Rock the Allies’ world.”

M
ICHAEL
WATCHED
AS
Kate located what must have been a recessed catch on the metal box’s lower edge because she pressed in with her finger nail and the box’s cover opened revealing an old style mechanical keyboard. But it wasn’t a typewriter. It looked more like the kind of machine that a court reporter would use. At the rear of it, behind the paper roller, were a series of vertically aligned spindles. Michael counted eleven of them as Kate carefully placed the machine down on the tar roof.

“This machine, Purple Sky, is a second generation version of the Japanese Purple encoding machine.”

“You’re going to have to give me more than that,” Michael said.

“During World War II the Germans made use of an encoding machine called Enigma to keep their radio communications secret. Both sender and receiver of the message needed an Enigma machine to decode whatever message was sent. This was a big problem for the Allies because they had no idea what the Germans were going to do next. As a result German U-boats were sinking Allied ships all over the place. Then, a guy named Alan Turing came along and with the help of a captured Enigma machine, broke the Enigma code.”

“Didn’t they make a submarine movie about that?”

“More than one. The point is, breaking the code was a turning point in World War II. This green box here, if it is what I think it is, is a second generation encoding machine based on the Japanese variant of the German equipment.”

“Time out. The Japanese had one too?”

“The Germans and the Japanese were on the same side, remember? Part of that alliance was based on the trade of technology. The Japanese took the Enigma technology and refined it further. Like I said before, they called their machine Purple. When the Germans heard about this, they decided to go one better. They designed a next generation variant of the Japanese equipment specifically for the Horten 21. Each Horten would be equipped with one, enabling secret communication between the planes just like the U-boats. Without one of these machines there would be no way to amend or decipher the Horten’s aerial transmissions. Hence the name, Purple Sky.”

Kate pressed a key which in turn rotated a spindle on the back of the machine. “Like with Enigma and Purple, you typed your message in here. The rotors that fit onto these spindles would mechanically transpose your message into something completely unreadable which was then broadcast by way of high frequency radio waves. This unit relies on analog technology. Infinite variations remember, not just ones and zeros. My guess is that the code it produces would be effectively unbreakable, even today.”

“May I?”

Kate handed Michael the device. It looked about the same as it felt. Cold, metallic and unwieldy. The spindles turned freely on their rods, the keys on the unit still taut.

“So a rotor that creates a unique code fits on the end of each of these spindles?”

“That’s the idea.”

“So where are they?”

“It’s been years. They could be anywhere.”

Michael turned the unit over and stared through the lattice of metal keys into the sunlight. One thing was clear, whatever Purple Sky was, German engineering had ensured that it was built to last. The underside of each key lever was oiled slightly like an old typewriter, dust clinging to its surface. Michael began to turn the unit right side up when the flicker of a shadow caught his eye.

“Michael, let’s save the archeology for the professionals. We need to get word to my people.”

“There’s a piece of wire hanging from the hasp of the swamp fan. Could you hand it to me?”

“The MSS is out there,” Kate said. “Given what we’ve just found I’m getting awfully uncomfortable about sitting on this roof.”

Michael reached over and removed the short bit of wire from the hasp himself. Holding the encoding unit up to the light with one hand, he passed the length of wire gently through the keys, snagging what looked like a small lump from the case’s metal bottom. Carefully prodding the lump up and out through the maze of levers, it took shape in the light of day.

“What is it?” Kate asked.

Michael put the machine down with one hand as he carefully took hold of the lump between his fingers. He uncrumpled it slowly revealing a very old, very tired sheet of carbon paper. Holding the dark purple carbon paper up to the sunlight, bright white script now shone through where its ink had been deposited on a long forgotten document. The first of the characters were obviously Chinese, but below them was an English translation. Michael read it aloud.

“Yangkok. Whoever last used this machine typed the word, ‘Yangkok'.”

28

A
QUICK
GLANCE
at Michael’s wrist-top GPS revealed Yangkok to be a remote village about fifteen miles into the mountains. There was little detail of the area on the LCD map underscoring the fact that Yangkok was known more for its complete lack of interest to the outside world than anything else. It was of interest now however, that much was certain. First things first. Both Michael and Kate agreed that the encoding machine was too valuable to leave on the rooftop. Fortunately, it fit nicely in Michael’s daypack. After reassembling the capsule and returning it to its hiding place, the next order of business was to contact Ted. Kate was indifferent to the idea, but at Michael’s insistence they stopped by the Yangshuo Hotel to find him. Ted, however, was nowhere to be found. Agreeing to put Ted aside for the moment, they concentrated on getting to Yangkok.

A survey of the local buses confirmed that there was no road connecting Yangshuo with the isolated village. That meant they’d have to walk, or potentially take a bicycle, but both those options would be slow. Still, if the paths they had traveled the day before were any indication of terrain, there wasn’t much room for anything else. Michael looked up and down the block where West Street met the main road. The teashops and auto repair shanties alongside the highway were just coming to life and Michael noticed something he’d missed a moment earlier — a row of men lined up further down the hill.

What caught Michael’s interest wasn’t the men per se, but what they held in their hands. Helmets. Michael quickened his pace down the grade to see that each of the men was seated on a mid-sized motorcycle, a yellow placard embossed with a number sticking up from their front fenders. The placards gave it away. These men were motorcycle cabbies awaiting their fares. And as with any cabbie, all that was left was the negotiation.

Michael’s proposal was simple. Instead of a ride about town, he wanted to rent one of their motorcycles for the day. If Michael was to be honest, he had to admit that the idea was crazy. Go to Manhattan and try to rent a yellow cab for the day. But Michael knew they needed the extra flexibility that their own transportation would provide. So, with Kate’s help translating, he tried his luck. As it was, after the predictable laughter followed by stunned silence, there was a motorcycle cabbie who looked like he might just need the money enough to be convinced. It was in this way that after a circuitous driving test, followed by several hundred yuan notes and a thousand assurances that they would be back before sunset, Michael and Kate found themselves the proud lessees of a beat up 250cc motorcycle.

The morning had progressed and leaving Yangshuo turned out to be busier than Michael anticipated. They were forced to share the road with diesel belching trucks and tractors, but once they turned onto a secondary road a few miles from town, things quieted down dramatically. While Michael was busy demonstrating his safe driving skills to the cabbies, Kate had been able to augment the meager detail on the GPS map with halfway decent directions to Yangkok. After a few miles of gravel road they would find a walking trail which would take them to a still narrower path along the base of the mountains. Ultimately they would follow this winding path for nine or ten miles, finally crossing a bridge over a stream which would lead them directly to the village.

So far the directions had been accurate. The karsts sprouted out of the earth like magic mushrooms growing closer and closer together until the rough road petered out entirely and was replaced by the narrow walking path. Michael felt Kate grasp him tightly as he twisted the throttle in an effort to keep them upright on the rough rolling trail. He liked having her there, feeling her closeness. And he wanted to trust her. But he just didn’t. There were still too many unanswered questions.

Continuing on, they soon found themselves in a meadow, the trail an ocher line stretching like a ribbon across the green grass. A small river was now visible in the distance, winding between the karsts where the meadow turned to water-filled rice paddies. Michael marveled at the place as he piloted the bike forward, careful to avoid dropping it on the path, which was soon reduced to a low berm between paddies, green rice shoots poking their heads out of the flooded fields.