Choke Point

Mandy out of the pub.”

“Yes.”

“But only Mandy was—”

“Attacked, yes. Perhaps because she was the only American. The terrorists are more afraid of Americans than Chinese. They watched the Iraqi War on CNN. But I don’t doubt they intended to kill my Wu Ling and the other students who might have overheard them. But there was much confusion. Wu Ling said many other students came out of the pub. The assassins escaped. By now they are probably in Shanghai, or Xinjiang.” Which meant, Riser realized, they would never be found.

“You think it was just beer talk?” Riser asked. “About attacks in the Northwest?” He was thinking of Mandy’s frantic phone message. “The Northwest of China or America?”

Chang shrugged. “What puzzles me is, what were two Muslim fanatics doing in a pub?”

Riser hadn’t thought of that. Muslims — fanatical Muslims — were forbidden to drink alcohol. “Terrorists have no patent on hypocrisy,” said Charles.

“True,” agreed Chang.

Riser got up from the table. “I’ll pass the information on to Washington.”

“Good. It may be nothing,” said Chang, “but I will also pass it on to Beijing. The problem is, Mr. Riser, we must be careful.” The inflection Chang gave to “we” was clearly meant to refer to China, not America.

“I thought Beijing’s policy was to be tough on terrorists.”

“Yes,” said Chang as they walked back out to rejoin Wu Ling, “we agree with your President. But Beijing must be careful. If it were to attack the terrorists in Taiwan, for example, it could be accused by Washington of using antiterrorism as an excuse, a pretext, to take over Taiwan.”

Riser nodded and extended his hand. “You’ve been very kind to tell me all this, General. I won’t forget it.”

The general brushed it aside. “If it was my daughter—”

“Yes,” said Riser, more sharply than he intended, but he was already thinking of revenge for Mandy’s murder. The scum had tortured her.

For a man who was his country’s cultural attache, a man presumably more sensitive to the finer things in life, he was taken aback by the depths of his hatred, by his seething desire for vengeance against whoever had killed his daughter. But the more he listened to Mandy’s last call, to the fear in her voice, its urgency, the evidence of her courage, the less he cared about the propriety of his thirst for revenge. He wanted the killer or killers — what would be the best he could hope for? Execute them the way the Chinese did it — a shot in the back of the neck? No, that was too quick.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In Beijing, the U.S. military attache, or “MA,” as Bill Heinz was called, was trying not to be curt. He was naturally sympathetic to Riser’s loss, but dammit, didn’t the cultural attache realize the possible import of Mandy Riser’s last message? “You should’ve told me about this right away, Charlie.”

“I did,” responded Riser, his voice echoing in the embassy’s enclosed security bubble. “I left you that memo before I flew down to Hangzhou.”

“Memo? A few words — something about a ’Wu Ling … nor … wes…. ’ C’mon, Charlie, I can’t send this to the agency. They’ll think I’ve gone China cuckoo. Too long away from the States.”

“How about the notes I left you about what General Chang told me?”

“Shit, Charlie, don’t you remember the flap in five-oh-two?”

Charlie had to think, military attaches preferring “Milspeak” to English. Five-oh-two? “May, two thousand and two — what about it?” said Charlie.

“Jesus, Charlie,” Heinz said more cordially. “What do you CAs do all day anyway? Listen to Peking Opera?”

Before Riser could answer the jest, the military attache hurried on. “May two thousand and two, Charlie. Congressional hearing on the security gaps before 9/11? How come al-Midhar and Alhamzi, two of the pricks who took over American Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon, had been identified by the Agency in Kuala Lumpur as al Qaeda operatives — as far back as January oh-two — but we didn’t pass the info on to the FBI or State Department? And how come the FBI itself failed on one of its own agent’s tips to find out why so many Arabs were taking flight training courses in the U.S.? How come our own Navy secretly builds research vessels and doesn’t tell brother agencies about it?”

Heinz answered his own long-winded question. “Interservice rivalry, yes, but just as often, Charlie, it’s because people simply don’t pass on the intel in time!”

Charles looked nonplused.

“What I’m saying, Charlie, is that soon as Chang told you about those terrorists talking about slag in—” Heinz glanced down at Charlie’s notes. “—Borberry’s Pub—”

“Barberry’s.”

“Yeah, well, Charlie, for a cultural attache your handwriting sucks. Point is, old buddy, you should have called me on the hotline immediately. Like, right away! Xinjiang’s back-to-back with K-stan,” continued the military attache, meaning Kazakhstan. “And Kazakhstan, Charlie, is oil. Three hundred million barrels a year. Most of it’s been piped to Russia, but that’s changing — fast. China’s Petroleum Corp. wants in on the tit. New deposits in the Caspian Sea puts Kazakhstan’s reserves to eighteen billion barrels. That, old buddy — now remember this, Charlie — equals three-quarters of the U.S.’s total reserves. So we want into K-stan too — cut our dependence on Saudi Arabia et al. A lot of U.S. companies have already invested there. Problem is, among the 228 million people who inhabit the Stans, there are a lot of Muslim fanatics, and not just al Qaeda. Some of these terrorist crazies are stirring it up in K-stan. With one dirty bomb—”

“I’m not that dumb,” Riser told his colleague. “No one wants them to set the oil wells on fire.”

“Or the pipelines. You let one martyr get away with blowing himself up next to a pipeline and it starts a trend.”

“You can’t punish him,” Riser said wryly, “if he’s dead.”

“Correct. Which is why your info from Chang is red hot, because it’s telling us, Washington, D.C., that if there’s any sign of Li Kuan, who one of our SpecFor Direct Action teams was supposed to waste in Afghanistan but failed—” Heinz took a breath. “—if there’s any sign that Li Kuan and his henchmen are stirring the pot along the Chinese/K-stan border, Beijing’s going to kick ass and take names. And Uncle Sam had best stay out of it. Let the PLA get Li Kuan and his mob.”

So now Charlie Riser saw something he hadn’t before — that while it was nice of Chang to help him cut through the red tape and tell him what happened to Mandy, the general, and thus Beijing, had also seen it as an opportunity to use him as a conduit to the U.S.’s Beijing military attache, thus informing Washington that Li Kuan, who’d given this SpecFor team the slip, was now headed for the K-stan — Chinese border and/or Taiwan to trigger chaos in China and the oilfields. But hopefully not chaos in America.

“So,” proffered Charles, “the Chinese don’t want the U.S. to interfere, should they have to wield a bit of stick.”

“Correct,” said the military attache. “Oh, in case you’re tempted to get a big head about being the chosen messenger, don’t. The Chinese have been feeding us this line for a while through other channels. Not officially — too much danger of leaks to pain-in-the-ass human rights types who’d march on the U.N. if they knew. But if Chang’s right about Li Kuan moving to K-stan, we could see SMA there any minute.”

“SMA?” Riser asked, knowing it was the MA’s acronym for substantial military action, but wanting his colleague to explain it in English.

“Substantial—”

“War,” cut in Riser. “In Central Asia — or even Taiwan, if that’s where Beijing thinks the terrorists are about to strike. Beijing still sees Taiwan as a province of China.”

“Taiwan’s a long shot,” said the MA, climbing out of the embassy’s ICB bubble on the way to the code room.