Razing Beijing: A Thriller (41 page)

“Do we know why she renounced?”

“No, and I’m still hoping that you can look into Chang’s
background before emigrating to the United States.”

McBurney closed his eyes—something else he’d forgotten to
ask Ross to take care of. Worse yet, he was now sharing her talents with three
other divisions. “I’ll have someone get back to you on that.”

“We’ve also learned that Stuart has rung-up dozens of trips
himself over the years, mostly China and Japan, all legitimate business-related
or so it would seem. Get this: Stuart and Devinn were fellow students at
Georgia Tech. And, Stuart had a hand in his hiring at Thanatech.”

McBurney glanced at the clock over the door, did a quick
calculation, clapped his hand over the phone and asked his secretary to ring Kate
on the other line. He had no choice but to cancel their dinner plans. “Didn’t
you have the Richmond office put Stuart under surveillance?”

“Yes. He walks his dog with his daughter a lot. So far,
that’s about it. Of course that might be, you know, ‘Here I am boys, I’m right
here walkin’ my dog!’ He works at a technology company called Coherent Light.”

“Never heard of it.”

“The Bureau’s processed background security checks for CLI
personnel. They were also the focus of an intellectual property theft
investigation that didn’t turn up anything. Stuart’s association with these
cases might well be circumstantial.” Hildebrandt described a few minor implicating
factors. “It’s all enough to suggest complicity at some level.”

McBurney agreed. “But I have a hard time believing anyone
would be stupid enough to run an espionage operation from within the targeted
company, let alone two such companies in a row.” Having said it, McBurney
thought suspicion of Stuart was probably not warranted. From a
counterintelligence perspective, there were elements of Stuart’s profile that
tended toward diminishing the likelihood that the businessman was agent to a
foreign power. For one, it would be uncharacteristic of McBurney’s Beijing
adversaries to entrust a significant operation to anyone not ethnic Chinese. Despite
Communist Party pronouncements to the contrary, they were every bit as racist
as they were paranoid.

“If he is involved, he’s either a two-bit player or one
very shrewd handler,” McBurney observed. “I’ll see if we don’t have a file on Stuart
somewhere.” He glanced at his watch.
And where in the hell was Carolyn Ross?
“Just send me everything you know about these two guys. Include Emily Chang in
that. Stuart works at some place called Coherent Light?”

“It’s a high-tech outfit located just north of Richmond. They’re
into a bunch of things, defense electronics, medical gadgets, satellite
telecom.”

McBurney frowned. “Satellite business?”

“That’s right. The U.S. District Attorney just got us
permission to wiretap Stuart’s residence.”

PRESIDING OVER THE CABINET
ROOM
from his place at the center of the table, Howard Denis rested the
palms of his hands against polished walnut, his fingers drum-rolling the
surface. His face looked drawn with strain and fatigue. The meeting of powerful
bureaucrats had barely begun. Unable yet to gage the dynamics of positions for
and against him, the president scrutinized the faces of Secretary of State
Walter Laynas, CIA Director Lester Burns, and Chief of East Asian Affairs
Samuel McBurney. Seated beside President Denis, his national security advisor
busied himself with an advance copy of McBurney’s brief.

A gray and weary-eyed Adam Hoffman muttered his apologies
upon finally entering the room. A White House steward promptly placed a saucer
and cup before his latest charge. All eyes were on the Energy Secretary as he
gazed into his coffee, stirring his cream—the sound of clinking china mingled
with several repetitions of the President’s drumming fingers.

Hoffman spoke somberly. “At ten o’clock this morning,
Venezuela’s oil minister will publicly announce the cartel’s plan for another
phased reduction, five per cent monthly, over each of the next three months.”

The words achieved their impact as surely had they come
directly from the oil czars all the way from Vienna. Upon leaving the assembly
of OPEC ministers, Hoffman had warned the President not to expect a favorable
outcome. The czars had abruptly ended talks in order to caucus in private, the disturbing
conclusion of which Hoffman himself had not been apprised until his limousine
breezed through the security gate at Andrews Air Force Base on his way to the
White House.

“Behold, oil as a weapon of war,” said the President. “Nice
work, Adam.”

The once-trusted cabinet advisor looked as if the President
himself had just kicked him in the groin. Hoffman’s hands started to tremble.

From his seat at the table opposite the secretary, McBurney
actually felt pity for him. Rumors that the Denis administration had taken
Hoffman to the woodshed, over statements conflicting with the President’s, were
apparently true.

McBurney’s charts would reveal that Hoffman had been given
an impossible task. As best that the CIA or anyone else could
establish—tracking tanker and pipeline distribution of world supplies was an
indeterminate art—there was, in fact, an adequate supply of oil. Illegal
collusion by the OPEC producers had very effectively limited world aggregate
supply to nominal demand within plus or minus a couple of million barrels. But
Hoffman had failed to convince the OPEC sheiks and mullahs that America did
not
harbor imperialist motives,
did
respect Islam, and
did
wage in
good faith their Middle East foreign policy. For five years the OPEC cartel had
rejected these arguments, gradually expanded their embargo, redirecting oil tankers
eastward. Not including the future reductions, fifteen per cent or three
million barrels of OPEC oil once delivered daily to U.S. refineries were being
diverted to the Asian markets. New York Mercantile and International Petroleum
exchange oil futures prices had tripled in the past year alone. Newly
discovered oil from places like Brazil and the Gulf of Mexico gradually fed
into the markets; OPEC either diverted or cut production an offsetting amount,
and price remained high. The oil shock had trashed the U.S. economy. While America’s
five percent of the world’s population historically consumed 25% of the oil, by
doing so they also produced some 33% of all economic output. Now, they were
stymied from doing either.

Federal initiatives touted by the administration to
encourage conservation and to deploy efficient technologies were having an
impact, but were proving far more costly than the fossil fuels they replaced. So
the recession had deepened, employment remained sluggish, and the President’s
approval ratings had plummeted. Hoffman’s announcement meant beleaguered
Americans were in for yet another shock. There in the Cabinet Room, careerists
whose livelihoods and fortunes rose or fell by the spoils of an incumbent
president silently considered Hoffman’s words in the context of Howard Denis’s re-election
odds.

Secretary of State Walter Laynas responded to the
president’s gloomy assessment. “The Israeli Knesset periodically issues
statements to the effect that OPEC’s objective is to weaken our support, while
the Arab states prepare another Yom Kippur-type assault.”

“And yet there’s the usual cheating going on with individual
production quotas, particularly among this new Saudi bunch,” said Energy
Secretary Hoffman, appearing to have regained his composure.

“I meant to ask you,” said the President. “To whom have the
Saudis abdicated their leadership role?”

Hoffman was going to be careful. “It’s difficult to say
who’s really calling the shots inside OPEC. Director Burns might have a better
handle on that than I would.”

“Oh, take a flyer, Adam. You just spent several days wining
and dining them. Surely you had to have some sort of negotiating strategy. That
normally requires some idea of who’s calling the shots.”

“We think it’s Iran.”

“That’s our assessment,” Director Burns agreed. It was another
reminder of the Islamic Republic’s burgeoning regional hegemony.

The Secretary of State had himself just returned from
Paris, having attended a meeting of Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development representatives to examine the precipitous rise in Middle East
tension. Laynas seemed eager to share what his diplomatic corps was reporting
from Vienna. “Mr. President, the Iranian oil ministry spokesman has pronounced
that so long as the peace process fails to yield full repatriation of
Palestinian refugees, the embargo will continue.”

“Same old broken record. That’s official, then?”

“Seems to be the case.”

“But they lack discipline,” Hoffman asserted, determined to
salvage a more positive tone. “New supply is coming on-line all the time,
albeit costly, and individual cartel members are forever tempted to violate
their production quotas by selling into exorbitant prices.”

Five years running indicated pretty good discipline,
thought McBurney as he glanced around the table. With eyes trained on McBurney’s
short stack of briefs, Herman waggled two fingers for him to pass them out.

McBurney slid a copy to the President and one each to the
other men seated around the conference table. “Several years ago, China’s State
Planning Council issued statements to the effect they were placing a ban on new
refinery construction, citing that capacity exceeded demand by 20 percent.” McBurney
paused. “In what appeared to us as a series of classic contradictions by
centralized planners, construction continued apace. The number of refineries
operated by Sinopec, China National Petroleum, and the People’s Liberation Army
that stood at 116 has grown to 193—an enormous increase in refining capacity. They
announced projects to further the development of Daqing, their oldest oilfield
northeast of Beijing, as well as Liaohe, Shegli, Xinjiang Karamay, Changqing, and
new fields in the Tarim Basin. Texaco and other foreign firms were awarded
exploration rights for whole regions of the Chinese interior. They also find
the need to clash every now and then with Vietnam and the Philippines over the
Spratly reserves being developed in the South China Sea.

“Even without taking stockpiling into account, best
estimates put their oil consumption at more than twice that of only a decade
ago. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Middle East exporters are
clamoring to exploit the emerging Asian market—especially if it can be done to
the detriment of the United States and Israel, as appears to be their strategy.”

President Denis asked, “You’re saying this isn’t costing
OPEC what it did during the old 1970’s embargo. Because their Asian customers
take up the slack?”

So much for the straightforward part of my story, McBurney thought.
“And we think China’s refining and storage capacity actually does exceed their
needs.”

“What the hell are they doing with it?”

McBurney described how heavily laden supertankers are parked
off China’s coast for weeks at a time. “Eventually the oil is offloaded to
expanded storage facilities like the ones in Pudong and Quanzhou. Crude is certainly
not being processed at a rate that would suggest they’re eager to get it to
market. By our estimate, a lot of petroleum is simply being hoarded.”

The energy secretary became angry. “Why wasn’t I told?” He
examined the faces around the table and returned his attention to McBurney. “Don’t
you think I could’ve used this information?”

Director Burns tried assuring Hoffman that investigating things
like storage farms and supertankers moored off China’s ports were best achieved
through the employment of spies. “Unfortunately, the lack of political appetite
for clandestiny—”

“Do we know
why
they’re hoarding so much oil?” asked
the President.

“We’re not certain,” McBurney admitted. “Some sort of
strategic reserve, apparently.”

“Have we asked whoever owns these supertankers? Supertankers
sitting in transit must cost somebody a lot of money.”

McBurney thought that an oddly narrow facet of detail for
the President to concern himself with. “Many belong to a Hong Kong partnership formed
with China Ocean Shipping. Others are Greek, Liberian, some independents under
Cypriot registry—not exactly strongholds of American goodwill these days.”

“I don’t think a smart aleck answer is what the President
was looking for,” Tom Herman said.

McBurney stared at Herman for several seconds. “I meant no,
we haven’t asked the tanker owners.”

“Thank you. You’re saying that China is conducting sort of an
entrenched hoarding of oil, with all these storage tanks and supertankers and
things, taking on oil whether they need it or not?”

McBurney nodded.

Herman leaned to whisper something into the President’s
ear. Denis responded by closing his eyes, shaking his head, and rubbing the
bridge of his nose. The President finally held up his hand and harshly retorted
to Herman, “I
know
that!”

Clenching his fists, President Denis said to McBurney, “OPEC’s
position is one of shipping us oil contingent upon our ally surrendering
territorial sovereignty, which Israel will never do. Or, our outright
abandonment of that ally, which we will never do.” For at least the second time
in forty years, OPEC was conducting geopolitical blackmail, albeit now on a
larger scale with the aid of China’s hungry market. “Is there any evidence of a
link between governments of the oil exporting nations and this bunch who call
themselves Free Palestine? I’ve asked that question before.”

“Tehran did issue a statement warning that Washington
accept responsibility for any violent reprisals against us, so long as we
continue funding the Israeli military.” The DCI shook his head. “But we lack
sufficient information to link Free Palestine to anyone.”