Checkmate Page 17

  Up until now, there’d been a small part of Fisher’s mind that found this too surreal to believe. But here, within arm’s reach, was the piece of proof that made it real.

  A section of the debris wall was missing, scooped out, he assumed, by the two discarded grain shovels at his feet.

  SLOWLY, carefully, he backed out of the container and into the tunnel. From the leg pocket of his coveralls he pulled a cylindrical sample tube roughly the size of a coffee mug. This was the last piece of gear Elena had given him. Made of lightweight titanium, the double-walled tube was lead-lined and topped with a finely threaded lid.

  He unscrewed the lid. Inside was a second, identical tube, this one the size of his thumb and secured in place by three spring-loaded prongs. He pulled this tube free and unscrewed the lid. Inside was a quarter-teaspoon titanium scoop.

  With the scoop in one hand and the tube in the other, Fisher went back inside the container. He was halfway to a kneeling position when he caught himself. Don’t bump or brush up against anything. He spread his legs wide for balance, then lowered himself into a crouch. He gently eased the tip of the scoop into a mound of debris at his feet. In the glow of his headlamp he saw a puff of ash surround his scoop. He went still and waited for the ash to settle, then pulled the scoop free and dumped its contents into the tube. He repeated the process five more times until the tube was filled with ash, then laid the scoop aside. He backed out of the container and into the tunnel, where he slid the smaller tube back into its mother, then screwed both lids back on.

  He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath. He let it out. He closed the container door and secured the crossbar.

  Per Elena’s adamant instructions, he took off his outer gloves and laid them aside, then picked up the tube and walked to the mouth of the tunnel and set the tube outside. He walked back inside, removed his boots, and laid them beside the gloves, then stepped out of the tunnel.

  The cool, night air enveloped him. He had to resist the impulse to tear off his gear. Slow down, Sam. Almost there. A few more steps and he was done.

  He walked to the hole he’d dug, and slowly removed his protective gear and placed each piece inside, followed by his inner layer of clothing, a thin cotton union suit Elena had given him. Now nude, he pulled a gallon jug of water from his rucksack and rinsed himself off, from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, then used the last few ounces to wash off the exterior of the sample tube.

  He wiped the excess water from his skin and hair, then donned his own clothes and sat down to catch his breath. He was drenched in sweat and his legs felt rubbery.

  From the other side of the mound he heard the growl of the GAZ’s engine. He snatched up his rucksack and hurried behind the mound and dropped flat. Seconds later, the searchlight skimmed over the ground and up the side of the mound, just missing the tunnel opening. The searchlight blinked out. The GAZ’s engine faded down the road.

  After covering the hole and collapsing the tunnel entrance, he shouldered his rucksack, then pulled out the OPSAT. Alexi’s map to the graves had been detailed enough for Fisher to find corresponding landmarks on the OPSAT’s map, so now he got his bearings and slipped into the woods, heading northeast.

  Alex had buried the soldiers together, under a spruce tree with a small cross made of twigs; the civilian he’d simply dumped in a shallow grave deeper in the forest. After fifteen minutes of walking, Fisher matched up the landmarks on the OPSAT and found the spot.

  He had a final hunch that needed satisfaction.

  Using the entrenching tool, he scraped around until he found the perimeter of the grave, then shoveled along the edges until the tip of the shovel touched something solid. He shoved his hand into the soil until his hand closed around the object. With a start, he realized it was a wrist. The flesh was the consistency of rotten pumpkin.

  He lifted the wrist slowly until a forearm rose from the dirt, followed by a shoulder. The stench of decomposition filled his nostrils He squeezed his eyes against it and swallowed. Now with an anatomical landmark with which to work, he started scooping away dirt until the corpse was uncovered.

  Alexi had laid the man faceup, arms crossed over his chest. Four months in the earth had rotted away most of the skin, revealing patches of muscle that had turned greenish-black with mold. In some places he could see patches of bone. He lifted each hand and examined them more closely. The fingertips on each were gone. Similarly, the face was obliterated, save for some skin and flesh around the cheekbones and eye sockets, but even these were shattered from what Fisher assumed were bullets.

  He leaned forward until he was within inches of the corpse’s face. There was no way to be sure—no way to prove it beyond a doubt—but Fisher swore the corpse’s eyes had an outer epicanthal fold. An Asian epicanthal fold.

  36

  THIRD ECHELON

  “WOULD you bet your life on it?” Lambert asked. “Would you bet a war on it?”

  Fisher considered the question. His gut instinct said, “Yes,” but Lambert’s point was well made: Lives were at stake—many thousands of lives that would be lost in a war that would not only forever change the Middle East but also America’s place in the world. Decisions of this gravity weren’t made on instinct.

  “My life—yes,” Fisher replied. “A war . . . No.”

  Fisher was convinced there was a game being played here, and that all the pieces had yet to be uncovered. But who was the driving force? The case against Iran was seemingly solid: the FBI had three suspects in custody, all of whom were talking, laying a trail a evidence that pointed to Tehran. And what did he have to counter that?> A now-destroyed yacht and a corpse with vaguely Asian features.

  After taking a dozen digital pictures of the corpse and then covering the grave again, Fisher had retraced his way through the forest to the main road. As promised, Elena had been waiting.

  Wordlessly, she drove him to within a few blocks of the Exclusion Zone checkpoint. Their good-bye was awkward. Something had clearly grown between them over the past two days, but Fisher knew the situation was impossible. He briefly considered trying to take her out with him—CIA be damned—but he quickly quashed it. If they were caught, she would be imprisoned and, at best, he would be detained for questioning. There was too much at stake and too little time. In the end, all he could do was promise to talk to the CIA on her behalf. She’d simply nodded.

  “So why the hesitation?” Lambert asked now.

  “You mean, why am I not playing the good soldier?” Fisher replied. “Why don’t I just take my marching orders and march? You know me better than that, Lamb.”

  “I do. And I also know how much you hate politics.”

  “When this started, you told me the President wanted all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted before he pulled the trigger. Consider this an i without a dot.”

  Pushing through the Situation Room’s door, Grimsdottir said, “Colonel, there might be something to that.” She sat down at the conference table and slid a manila folder across to Lambert. “I managed to pull a good chunk of data from the hard drive Sam brought back from Hong Kong.”

  Lambert studied the folder’s contents for a few moments. “Give it to me in English.”

  “First of all, I found traces of Marcus Greenhorn all over the hard drive. I think I’m starting to learn his tricks. There was no virus, but he’d written the code for the CPU’s built-in firewall. Too bad he’s dead; I wouldn’t mind going up against him again.”

  A phone at Lambert’s elbow trilled and he picked up. He listened for a moment, said, “Escort him up,” then hung up. “Tom Richards.”

  When Fisher had touched down at Andrews Air Force Base, his sample from Chernobyl had been taken by special CIA courier to the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory for anaysis.

  “Before he gets here,” Fisher said, “I need a favor.” He explained Elena’s situation. “She’s burnt out, Colonel. Sooner or later she’s going to get caught.”

 
Lambert nodded thoughtfully, but Fisher could see the doubt in his eyes. While of value, the information Elena had been feeding the CIA wasn’t earth-shattering, and in terms of lives and resources, it probably wasn’t worth the risk of extracting her.

  “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.”

  37

  “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.”

  38

  PAVE LOW HELICOPTER, EAST CHINA SEA

  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.”