scientists. If events went against him … well, he would deal with that, too.
As the Jetta plowed off into the twilight, Smith walked toward the highest office building, covertly watching everyone and everything. He was dressed in a black sweater, black jeans, and soft-soled, flexible shoes. On his back was a light pack, also black. He looked up. The building that housed Flying Dragon blazed with light, a contributor to the city’s dazzling night skyline. Across the street, the Starbucks was still open, a scattering of coffee drinkers sitting at the small round tables in a hyperrealistic display reminiscent of an Edward Hopper painting. The air had that faint diesel odor of all cities, with touches of Asian spices and garlic.
Through the high-rise’s plate-glass windows, Smith saw a single uniformed guard, dozing behind a security desk in the lobby. Smith might be able to slip past, but the risk was unnecessary. The modern building should have all the customary features.
He continued past to the driveway that led down into a lighted, but closed garage. About ten feet beyond the ramp was an exit door to the fire stairs. Just what he needed. He tried it. It was locked from inside. He used the picklocks disguised as surgical instruments he carried in his medical kit. The door opened on the fourth try.
He slid inside, closed it quietly behind, returned the picklocks to his backpack, and listened in the empty stairwell. It stretched upward out of sight. He waited two minutes and began climbing. His soft-soled shoes made little sound. Flying Dragon Enterprises was on the eighth story.
Twice he froze, remaining motionless as a door opened somewhere above and footsteps reverberated.
At the eighth floor, he took a stethoscope from his backpack and used it to listen through the door. Satisfied there was neither sound nor movement on the other side, he pulled open the door and stepped into a green- carpeted, white-walled waiting area decorated in ultramodern chrome, glass, and suede.
A wide corridor, with the same white walls and emerald carpet, led to a cross corridor of double doors — some of glass and others of polished wood. The corridor stretched in both directions. Flying Dragon Enterprises turned out to be the third set of double-glass doors. Smith glanced in casually as he passed. There was a lightless reception area.
Behind it was a large, lighted office of long rows of empty desks, with a wall of windows behind the desks. Solid doors lined the inner walls right and left.
On his third pass, he tried the entrance doors. They were unlocked.
Eager but wary, he slipped inside and wove soundlessly among the furniture to the solid door in the far corner. The door was marked in both Chinese and English gold lettering: yu yongfu, president and chairman. No light showed beneath the door.
He slid inside and, using the illumination from the open doorway, crossed to a large desk. He switched the lamp there onto low beam. The small column of yellow light gave the office a dim, ghostly affect that would not be evident down on the street.
He closed the outer door and surveyed the room, impressed. It was not a prized corner office, but it was so mammoth that its size more than compensated. The view was pure prestige, too — sweeping from the river and the towers of Pudong to the historic Bund, northeast Shanghai across Suzhou Creek, and finally back to the river as it curved east and headed downstream to the Yangtze.
The most important piece of furniture to Smith was a three-drawer filing cabinet, which stood against the left wall. There was also a white suede sofa with matching armchairs, a glass Noguchi coffee table, a wall of leather-bound books to the right, original Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol paintings here and there, and a panoramic photo of turn-of-the-nineteenth-century British Shanghai. The desk itself was mahogany, and enormous, but in this office seemed small. The office told a story: Yu Yongfu, president and chairman, had made it big and gaudy in New China, and he wanted everyone to know it. Smith hurried to the cabinet. It was locked, but his picks made short work of it. He pulled out the top drawer. The folders were filed alphabetically — in English, with the words duplicated in Chinese. Another of Yu Yongfu’s grandiose affectations.
When he located the file for The Dowager Empress, he exhaled. He had been holding his breath without realizing it. He opened the file right there, on top of the cabinet, but all he could find were useless internal memos and the manifests of old voyages. His worry growing, he kept at it. Finally, with the last document, there it was — the manifest.
His excitement dimmed as he studied it. The dates were right, as were the ports on both ends of the journey, Shanghai and Basra. But the cargo was wrong. It was a list of what the freighter allegedly carried — radios, CD players, black tea, raw silk, and other innocent freight. It was a copy of the official manifest, filed with the export board. A smoke screen. Angrily he returned to the cabinet, searching through the other file drawers, but found nothing more that related to the Empress. As he closed and relocked the cabinet, he grimaced. He would not give up. There must be a safe somewhere. He scanned the huge office and considered what sort of person would create it — vain, self-congratulatory, and obvious. Of course. Obvious. He turned back to the filing cabinet. Above it hung the panoramic picture of old British Shanghai. He lifted the framed photo from the wall, and there it was — the safe. A simple wall safe, with no time lock or any other advanced electronics he could see. His picklocks would … “Who are you?” demanded a voice in heavily accented English. He turned slowly, quietly, making no provocative move. Standing in the gray light of the doorway was a short, heavy Chinese man who wore rimless glasses. He was aiming a Sig Sauer at Smith’s belly.
Beijing Night was one of Beijing’s best times, when the slow transformation from terrible pollution and gray socialist lifestyles to unleaded fuels and cutting-edge fun was apparent in pockets of vibrant nightlife under a starry sky that was once impenetrable through city smog. Karaoke and solemn band music were out. Discos, pubs, clubs, and restaurants with live music and fine food were in. Beijing was still firmly Communist, but seductive capitalism was having its way. The city was shrugging off its dreariness and growing affluent.
Still, Beijing was not yet the economic paradise the Politburo advertised. In fact, ordinary citizens were losing their fight against gentrification and being forced out of the city, because they could no longer afford the cost of living. It was the dark side of the new day.
This mattered to the Owl, if not to some of the others on the Standing Committee. He had studied Yeltsin’s failure to stop Russia’s greedy oligarchs and the near-destruction of the Russian economy that resulted.
China needed a more measured approach to its restructuring.
But first, the Owl had the human-rights treaty with the United States to protect. It was critical to his plans for a democratic, socially conscious China.
Tonight was a special meeting of the nine-member Standing Committee.
From under his half-closed eyes, he studied the faces of his eight colleagues at the ancient imperial table in the Zhongnanhai meeting room. Which man should concern him? In the party and, therefore, in the government, a rumor was not merely a rumor — it was a call for support.
Which meant one of the solemn older men or the smiling younger ones was reassessing his position on the human-rights agreement, even as Niu waited to make his report.
Half blind behind his thick glasses, their leader — the august general secretary — was unlikely to resort to spreading a rumor, Niu decided. No one would oppose him openly. Not this year. And where he went, his acolyte from their days in Shanghai would always follow. That one had the face of an executioner and was too old and too committed to his boss to ever be secretary himself. He had no reason to bother with fighting the treaty.
The four beaming younger men were possibilities. Each was assembling backers to strengthen his power base, but at the same time all were modern men and, as such, strong proponents of good relations with the West. Since the treaty was important to the current U.S. president, persuading them to reverse their support would be difficult.
That left two potentials, one of which was Shi Jingnu, with the fat, grinning face of the silk merchant’s clerk he once was. To paraphrase Shakespeare, he smiled and smiled but was a villain. The second possibility was bald, narrow-eyed, never-smiling Wei Gaofan, who as a young soldier had once met the incomparable Chu Teh and never moved beyond that moment.
The Owl nodded to himself inside his own sleepy smile. One of those two. They were old guard, fighting to maintain power as the specter of irrelevance breathed chills down the backs of their ancient, wrinkled necks.
“Jianxing, you have not commented on Shi Jingnu’s report?” The general secretary smiled to show he knew the Owl was not sleeping.
“I have no comment,” the Owl — Niu Jianxing — said.
“Then do you have a security report to make?”
“One matter came up today, Chairman,” Niu said. “Dr. Liang Tianning, the director of the Shanghai
