“Put him on the phone.”
He handed the unit to Sokolov, who did not accept the offer.
“Your son wants to speak with you,” he said.
Defiant lines faded from the Russian’s face. A hand slowly came up to grip the phone.
Tang shook his head, then pressed the SPEAKER button.
An excited voice—young, high-pitched—started talking, asking if his father was there. Clearly, Sokolov recognized the voice and opened his mouth to speak, but Tang muted the mouthpiece with another press of a button and said, “No.”
He brought the unit back to his own ear and unmuted the call.
“Stay on the line,” he directed the man on the other side. “If Comrade Sokolov does not tell me exactly what I want to know in the next minute, I want you to kill the boy.”
“You can’t,” Sokolov screamed. “Why?”
“I tried persuasion, then torture, and I thought we had made progress. But you remain defiant. So I will kill your son and find out what I need to know elsewhere.”
“There is no elsewhere. I’m the only one who knows the procedure.”
“You’ve recorded it somewhere.”
Sokolov shook his head. “I have it solely in my head.”
“I have no more time to deal with your lack of cooperation. Other matters require my attention. Make a decision.”
An iron ceiling fan slowly rotated overhead, barely stirring the lab’s warm air. Defeat filled the geochemist’s face as his head nodded.
“Keep the boy there,” he said into the phone. “I may call back in a few moments.”
He ended the call and waited for Sokolov to speak.
“If that sample on the table contains the marker,” the scientist said, “then it’s proof that the oil is from an abiotic source.”
“What marker?”
“Diamondoids.”
He’d never heard the term before.
“Smaller than the wavelength of visible light. Tiny specks of diamond that form within oil created deep in the earth’s crust, where there is high temperature and high pressure. A million of them would barely fit on the head of a pin, but I found them, and I named them. Adamantanes. Greek for ‘diamond.’ ”
He caught pride in the declaration, ignored it, and asked, “How did you find them?”
“Heating oil to 450 degrees Celsius vaporizes away the chemical compounds. Only diamondoids remain, which X-rays will reveal.”
He marveled at the concept.
“They are shaped as rods, disks, even screws, and they are not present in biotic oil. Diamond can only be formed deep in the mantle. It is conclusive proof of abiotic oil.”
“And how do you know that the earth actually produces the oil?”
“Right here, in this lab, I heated marble, iron oxide, and water to 1,500 degrees Celsius at 50,000 times atmospheric pressure, mimicking conditions one hundred miles beneath the earth. Every time, I produced both methane and octane.”
Tang grasped the significance of that result. Methane was the main constituent of natural gas and octane the hydrocarbon molecule in petrol. If those could be produced in a lab, they could be produced naturally, along with oil itself.
“The Russians know all this, don’t they?” he asked.
“I personally found over eighty fields in the Caspian Sea applying this theory. It is still doubted by some, but yes, the Russians are convinced oil is abiotic.”
“But they have no proof.”
Sokolov shook his head. “I left before I discovered the diamondoids. Zhao and I did that here.”
“So the Russians work from an unproven theory?”
“Which is why they speak little of this publicly.”
And why, Tang thought, they were so interested. Surely they wanted Sokolov back. Maybe even permanently silenced. Thank goodness Viktor Tomas had kept him apprised of exactly what the Russians were doing. But he made no mention of that intrigue and instead said, “And that’s also why they maintain the myth of scarcity?”
“They watch, amused, as the rest of world pays too much for oil, knowing it is endless.”
“But they are likewise cautious, since they have no proof that their concept is true.”
“Which is understandable. They lack what you have. A verified sample from a place where ancients drilled for oil. Only the Chinese could have such a sample.” Disgust had invaded his voice. “This was the only place on earth man drilled for oil two centuries ago.”
Pride swelled within him.
Sokolov pointed to the table. “If diamondoids are in that sample, then the oil is abiotic. All you would need is another sample, from long ago, from the same field, for comparison. To prove the theory, that sample must test biotic with no diamondoids.”
He appreciated the simplicity of the equation. Biotic oil first, siphoned away with drilling, replaced with abiotic oil. And Gansu might be the only place on earth where such a comparison could be made. Every surviving historical record made clear that those first explorers, more than 2,000 years ago, drilled exclusively in the vicinity of the well in Gansu. Any oil surviving from that time would have come from the ground there.
All he required was a confirmed sample of that oil.
“You told me the lamp is gone,” Sokolov said. “Along with its oil. So where will the comparison sample come from?”
“Not to worry, comrade. I secured that sample and you will soon have it.”
FORTY-FIVE
BEIJING
NI REALIZED THAT THE PREMIER EXPRESSED HIMSELF IN A SUBTLE manner devised to keep his listener on edge. Before, a desk had always stood between them, his investigative reports received with only a flicker of interest and little comment. But this talk was different.
“I remember,” the old man said, “when every bus window was plastered with slogans and pictures of Mao. Store windows the same. Radios only broadcast revolutionary music, Mao’s thoughts, or state news. Movie houses showed only Mao greeting Red Guards. Even the opera and ballet performed only revolutionary works. We all carried our book of quotations since you never knew when you would be called upon to cite a section.”
The premier’s voice was quiet, rough, as if the memories were bitterly painful.
Ni began to understand why they were here.
“Hegemony is our weakness,” the premier said. “That unwillingness within us to work with any foreign power, even when there is no threat. Hegemony is a natural expression of our totalitarianism, just as peaceful relations are to democracy. We have always believed ourselves to be the geographic and geopolitical center of the world. For centuries, and especially since 1949, the sole goal of our foreign policy has been to dominate our neighbors and then, eventually, the remainder of the world.”
“That is totally beyond our grasp.”
“You and I know that, but does the remainder of the world know? I recall when Kissinger came in 1971, on a secret mission to lay the groundwork for renewed contact between the United States and China. The use of the word
