Razing Beijing: A Thriller (21 page)

“They are fine.”

“Good. That’s got to be the most important news of the day.
And look, we’ve suffered setbacks before. I’m confident you and your team of
wizards will work your way through this latest.”

Emily bit her lower lip. “We’re afraid the memory modules
have been permanently damaged.” Her reply was almost too soft to be heard.

“Did you say,
permanently
?”

FEELING DEEPLY ASHAMED
for
her deception of Stuart, and mortified for having performed it so well, Emily
strode toward the relative sanctity of her cubicle. Never before had she felt
more alone or more vulnerable to things beyond her control. Sitting down behind
her desk she realized that her lower lip was trembling. A wave of angry
resentment passed over her like a flash of heat.

In the last few days, Emily had made good use of the many
hours to reflect during her transcontinental flights, an emotional journey from
her initial shock to fear, fear to anger, and anger finally to hatred. But
unfocused hatred was wasted energy until she knew upon whom to train it. One option
had been to submit to these pseudo-anonymous saboteurs, and then cower in limbo
while awaiting word that her parents were safe—this the thugs expected of her.
You
must think for yourself—only
one
flies at the front of the flock
,
she recalled her father as saying, uncertain then what practical bearing it
had. Her father’s contorted face with the pistol crammed into his mouth haunted
her every moment. Instead of submitting, she had embarked upon a somewhat
riskier path, committing herself to her original goal of smuggling her parents
to America. Now, the snakeheads she had hired were also paid for the additional
burden of finding them.

Emily closed her eyes, collecting her thoughts. It was the
means
by which she had paid them that had her at the brink of exhaustion.
Tortola,
Vancouver, Cleveland
...her nerves increasingly frazzled every mile of each
flight in between. Simply wiring the sum had been out of the question. Responding
to her anxious plea late Tuesday night, the snakeheads had demanded she front
the deal with half of her payment, to be paid in person, cash in-hand,
apparently as a means of satisfying their own security concerns. At first she
found the demand unreasonably expensive, burdensome and not without risk of its
own, as the bank in Tortola’s demand for fingerprints, and the intrusive
questions by U.S. passport inspectors, eventually served to remind her. Since
9/11 the Federal Reserve had buttressed their role as clearinghouse for all
electronic money transfers initiated within the United States—regardless of
where the assets were held. It was her discovery of this fact that eventually
sold her on the archaic method of shipping postal money orders to the bank in
Tortola each month—she found it ironic that a software geek such as herself had
not devised a more intelligent method. Presented by the bank with the stack of
bills barely three inches high, she had ultimately found the task a little less
formidable.

There simply seemed no choice but to betray the trust of
her employer. Playing such cards improperly could render her powerless to help either
of her parents. In fact, she had just lied to Stuart, a good and honest man,
forever dashing her hopes of winning his favor. She considered too risky the
option of approaching him with her dilemma. Stuart would want to involve the
authorities upon learning of the note demanding that she destroy the ECU—truly the
smoking gun they all had been looking for. Would he be willing to countenance
the smuggling of foreigners?

Simply because my teammates were doing their job, my
parents are pawns in some evil, despicable scheme. The more she thought about
everything, the angrier she became.

Someone had somehow managed to sabotage the engine’s ECU,
thereby triggering the Mojave explosion. The question that dogged her was
how
.
Among the few who would have had the necessary access was one of her best engineers.
As unbelievable as it seemed, Sean Thompson being involved could explain other
recent difficulties. But did he possess
that
sort of ruthlessness? Was he
clever enough to also have broken into her apartment? The software engineer
seemed somehow incapable of harming even a flea on her cat, let alone
conspiring in murder. There could be little doubt that
somebody
on her
staff was complicit. But who, and
why
? And why would they instruct her,
instead of the original saboteur, to carry out the coup de grace on the ECU?

While they might
think
they had her under their
thumb, she had no intention of cowering. Now that she had hired the smugglers,
and planted the seed for deceiving everyone into believing the ECU now beyond
repair, it was time to proceed with the next phase of her plan.

Emily found Thompson alone in his cubicle poring over a
stack of printouts. She watched him long enough for her anger to mount. “Sean?”

Thompson spun around.

Emily took in the wide-set eyes and willed herself to be
calm. “I’m calling everyone into Hawkins’s Conference Room. Can you make it?”

“What do I need to bring?”

Her smile was pleasant. “Just yourself.”

Five minutes later, Emily gazed into nine curious stares
with the exception of Rick Abrams, who instead looked as though he had
accidentally driven over a cherished family pet. Seeing that everyone was
seated, she shut the door to the conference room and chose the chair at the
head of the table.

“First, I want to be clear that none of us has anything to
be ashamed of,” Emily began. “We’ve all worked very hard. This problem
discovered today does not diminish our achievements. Mr. Stuart asked that all
of you be reminded of that fact.”

Kate Stuyvick-Coble asked, “What’s it mean for the
investigation?”

“Naturally, it no longer makes sense to pursue writing the flight
data recorder communication code.” Emily struggled not to make more than
fleeting eye contact with any of them. She noted Thompson’s tendency to similarly
shift his eyes. “Not until there is some sign that the engine control might be
recoverable. But Rick’s initial assessment leaves little likelihood of that.”

“So, will there be an effort to recover the ECU?” Stuyvick-Coble
again.

“That’ll be up to Mr. Stuart and the committee,” she
answered honestly. “My guess is that an effort will continue on a more limited
basis.” The group responded with pause at news that would probably mark the end
of mandatory overtime.
If only they knew why
, Emily thought bitterly. What
was that Americanism Sandy Cole liked to invoke—
In for a dime, in for a
dollar?

“Either way,” Emily cleared her throat and tried to
concentrate on sounding matter-of-fact. The trick was to make this appear
beyond her control. “Either way, the NTSB had already proposed that we take
what amounts for all of us here at Thanatech something of an unorthodox step. Management
will now almost certainly agree to proceed. In fact, from what I gather they
already have. Against the backdrop of loss of life, and the persistent absence
of a likely cause, NTSB representatives will be conducting interviews with...well,
select individuals.”

As the other engineers stared back blankly, Rick Abrams
looked up from the table. “What kind of interview?” he asked.

“As I understand, it’s common practice in NTSB crash
investigations where suspicious circumstances—”

“You’ve got to be kidding!” blurted Stuyvick-Coble. “They
want to
interrogate
us, like they think we’re guilty of something?”

“I share your feelings, Kate, but I’m told it’s a matter of
routine. Under these circumstances none of us, including me, has any choice. The
incidence of death always did override Mojave’s classification as a
straightforward industrial accident.” She was groping for things to say as she
went along; that she could lie so easily was a little disturbing to her. “We’ve
treated the recovered hardware as court-admissible evidence. This is the next
logical step for an unresolved investigation.”

“How long have you known about this?” asked Sean Thompson.

“Only a week or so.” Her staff wore expressions of
disbelief. She returned the baffled stares of her audience with a shrug. “I
don’t like it any more than you do. Perhaps none of us will be called. The fact
is that an NTSB official may notify any one of us over the course of the next
few weeks. The interview may include a polygraph examination—”

“Polygraph?” several asked in unison.

“Apparently. You’ll likely be asked questions about your
responsibilities, security practices governing files and computers, that sort
of thing. Just be honest. This is not a legal proceeding and nobody is being
charged. I’m told you will be asked to not discuss details of your interview. For
that matter, we’ve already been told that for all practical purposes, we should
look upon today’s discussion as if it never took place.” Hopefully she won’t be
called to explain her harmless, albeit manipulative ruse, before she’s had a
chance to see if it works.

Emily took a moment to glance around the room as her
version of reality sank in. As professionals, it had never occurred to them
that they might be subjected to this unthinkable suspicion—Emily was pleased. “I’m
certain none of us has any reason to be concerned.”

*     *     *

“ON THE OTHER HAND,”
Stuart
said evenly into the telephone, “if I could speak
with him, then perhaps
I won’t need to see him.”

A sigh. “Very well,” Cole’s secretary replied. He heard the
click indicating a transferred call. During the several minutes of silence,
Stuart realized that despite everything else going on, it was still the
bureaucratic distractions that he most hated about Thanatech. Attempting even
the simplest task was like wading through molasses.

Cole’s monotone broke the silence. “What can I do for you,
Stu?”

“I need to see you about the investigation. It’s very
important.”

“Now would be fine.”

Rounding the corner on his way to the CEO’s office, Stuart nearly
ran into the chief bureaucrat—er, chief engineer—walking the opposite way. Hackett
seemed surprised to see him. “Good morning, Morton. Or is it afternoon
already?”

Hackett glanced at his watch. “Shouldn’t you be at your
status review?”

“Actually, I asked Chang to run it. If I’d known I’d be bumping
into you, I’d have had her write me a hall pass.” He smiled.

Hackett appeared slow to find the humor in that. “You and Emily
are waging one
elec-tro-fying
juggernaut, aren’t you? Only, I hear
there’s been a little problem.”

“Well maybe you should start attending our reviews again. Excuse
me, Mort, I’ve got Cole waiting—”

Hackett reached out and gripped Stuart’s hand; Stuart
gripped back and found himself uncomfortably close to Hackett’s smiling face. “
Carbon
seals,” Hackett chuckled, shaking his head. “Couple years ago I suggested we
take all these friggin’ carbon seals, pile ’em into my grill and I’d cook up
your staff a bunch of Delmonicos. Remember? I think we’d all be a little better
off, had you taken my offer.”

“I thought eating beef was bad for the environment. Sorry,
gotta go.”

STUART SMILED
hello
at Cole’s glowering secretary and, without knocking, pushed open the door to
find his boss poring over periodicals on his desk. Not looking up, Cole raised
a finger as he finished his reading while Stuart walked in to sit down. Among
the items drawing Cole’s formidable intensity were the company’s recent 10K and
a copy of
Barron’s
.

The CEO was known throughout the company as a fastidious
time manager. Arriving to work each day at 6:00
A.M.
, Cole liked to say that by 8:00
A.M.
everyone’s desk should be ‘as clear as the mind that cleared it.’ Stuart judged
that the unseemly piles on Cole’s desk probably represented a month’s worth of
mail, draft reports, crumpled napkins and magazines stained with coffee-mug
rings. The monitor of his desktop computer was dark.

“Did you know,” Cole finally said, his finger tracing down
a column in the open leafs of
Barron’s
, “since Merrill and DLJ
downgraded their recommendations last week, the market value of options issued
to my Thanatechnology staff have declined by four-hundred fifty-two million
dollars?”

Stuart studied the man’s unshaven face. Though in his late
fifties, lately his boss could pass for someone approaching seventy. His hair
and cotton-knit shirt looked as though they’d been slept in. “What the market
giveth, the market taketh away,” Stuart said, intending lightheartedness.

Cole nodded and gazed distantly out the windows into the
clear blue sky. “UTC’s shares have risen over fifteen per cent in the last
month, did you know that? Wait until our first order cancellation.” He squinted
his eyes. “I’ll let you in on a secret, one which probably won’t surprise you. You
guys aren’t the only ones taking a bath—so are a certain handful of Washington
power brokers. Know what happens if they lose faith in us? They pull their
support, cave in, and before you know it, Big Oil gets a few more permits to
drill
.
At some point the price of oil will plummet, then nobody will want this
expensive contraption of ours.”

Stuart admitted having no head for politics, but he wondered
if Cole was suffering some sort of paranoid delusion. “Do you really think so? Every
other day it seems like another of these green initiatives goes belly-up for
some reason or other. The price of oil seems to wander along regardless. I
mean, our propfan is significant, but not
that
significant.”