“One thousand euros. Now.”
“We have many of these,” said Kimko. He didn’t trust Li Han’s detector, and in fact wasn’t even sure the bug was a listening device. It looked more like a plastic model, a gag toy. He started to give it back.
“A thousand euros as a down payment.” Li Han pushed his hand away gently. “The device as a token of my sincerity.”
“I will give you five hundred euros right now,” said Kimko, deciding now it was the only way to get rid of him.
Li Han folded his arms and looked down at the floor of the truck. Kimko wondered if he should go higher. No, he decided — he shouldn’t have made an offer at all.
“Five hundred will do for now,” said Li Han. “There is a three-story building near the railroad tracks that once belonged to the stationmaster. You will meet me there at dusk tomorrow if you intend to purchase the aircraft. It won’t be there,” added Li Han, “so you needn’t try any tricks. Come alone. I will take you to it, and you will transfer the money to an account. Once the transaction is complete, we can all be on our way. Come alone. Alone.”
“Understood,” said Kimko.
“They’re leaving,” said Nuri, watching the video feed on the MY-PID slate. It was coming directly from the Global Hawk; the Tigershark was still a few minutes away, and MY-PID itself still wasn’t online. “The car with Li Han seems to be going back to the house,” said Nuri. “If it does, then we should follow the second truck, see where it goes.”
“I want Mao Man,” said Melissa, leaning forward in the backseat.
“We’ll get him,” said Nuri. “Relax.”
Nuri zoomed the screen out as the vehicles continued to drive. He couldn’t watch both for very much longer.
“Li Han has to take priority,” insisted Melissa.
“He’s your problem,” said Nuri. “We’re here for the UAV. Danny, we have to choose. I say we go with the truck. We can relocate Li Han easily.”
“You could say the same about the truck,” answered Melissa.
“Nuri’s calling the shots on the surveillance,” said Danny. He put the Mercedes into gear. “Which way am I heading?”
As soon as Li Han was out of sight, Kimko told the driver to get on the road and go south. He pulled his ruck from the floor of the truck and reached inside, taking out a small fabric pencil case. He unfolded a metallic instrument from inside a small cocoon of bubble wrap, pushed its two halves together and turned. An LED at the end blinked red twice, then turned green. This was a bug detector, simpler in operation than Li Han’s, though more sophisticated, or so Kimko thought. It detected all manner of radiation; if the mosquito was a listening device, it would find out.
The light stayed green, even when he put the other end of the stick against it. He began to speak.
“I wonder if this is really a listening device,” he said in Russian. “I doubt it. He has taken my euros and I will never see him again.”
The light remained green.
Probably it was phony. But then, so was the money he had handed over.
Kimko replaced the detector carefully back in its little nest. He took his satellite phone from the ruck and tapped the numbers; it was time to talk to Moscow.
Turk eased off the throttle as the Tigershark reached the ellipse marked out on his helmet display’s sitrep map. The map gave the pilot a God’s eye view of the world, with his target area in the center screen; he switched to the more traditional American view, showing the plane in the center, then keyed his mike to talk to Danny.
“Tigershark to Whiplash Ground — Colonel, I’m on station. You should have an affirmative hookup.”
“Roger that, Tigershark. Ground acknowledges. Starting the handshake.”
Turk smirked at the terminology.
Having five hundred euros in his hand made Li Han feel almost insanely giddy. It was foolish and stupid — he had far larger sums than that in any number of his accounts, and several thousand in American dollars stuffed into his boots. Yet he couldn’t help the intoxication. He’d been raised in a dirt-poor village in northwestern China; when he was growing up, the family pig ate better than he did. All the years since had done nothing to erase the memories of abject poverty and worthlessness, and only magnified the importance of money. Of cash. Of bills that passed smoothly between your fingers.
He folded them carefully, then put them in his pocket. Back to the problem at hand.
“Why did the program execute once it was in the laptop?” Li Han said aloud. He spoke in his native Chinese, trying to work out his problem with an invisible colleague. “And what does it think it’s doing? Is it trying to go after me? I wonder what sort of intelligence it has. Because clearly it has intelligence.”
“What are you saying?” asked Amara in English.
“Something you wouldn’t understand,” snapped Li Han in Chinese.
The young man didn’t understand what he said, but the harsh tone came through, and his face turned to a frown. Li Han felt a twinge of guilt — Amara wasn’t a bad kid. He should be kinder to him, especially since he thought he would be useful.
“I am exploring a problem,” Li Han said in English, trying to make his voice kinder. “The aircraft’s brain is a computer. When it interfaced with my computer, it acted as if it were alive. It started to operate. Do you know what that means?”
“The program began to work on its own.”
“Exactly. Which is not something it should do.”
He isn’t completely ignorant, Li Han thought. He might be taught; he could be useful.
“I don’t entirely understand it yet,” continued Li Han. “I think it is some sort of control unit that is plugged into the brain and then programmed. But the programming is very involved. My face and a file of information about me was there.”
“Why?”
“Good question. I’m not sure. It is clear I was its target. These weren’t surveillance images. So was the aircraft programmed to watch me? I think so. How did they do it? How is this connected to the rest of the software, the part I haven’t seen? I’m not sure. That is what I am pondering.”
“Why is all this useful?”
Li Han couldn’t help but smirk. Amara was not stupid, but there were clear limits.
“Let’s say we want to watch someone,” he explained. “Let’s say we want to target the President of the United States for surveillance. If we gave the computer all of the information, could it do it? That is my question — because the information about me is in the command deck, the portion of the program that is supplying controls. Why would it be there otherwise? I don’t know,” added Li Han. “We must do more work.”
“You are going to sell it to the Russian.”
“Not that part,” said Li Han. “Not the brain. The brain is self-contained.”
Li Han explained how he had pulled it from the aircraft.
“I believe it could work in another aircraft,” he added. “I’m not entirely sure. I need to experiment more.”
They took a left turn off the main highway moving west, away from the city.
“Where are you going?” Li Han asked.
“You told me you wanted a new place.”
“True,” said Li Han.
Suddenly, a host of suspicions fell on him. Paranoia surged back. Where was Amara taking him?
Li Han put his hand down casually, letting it rest on his holster.
They drove about two miles, climbing up a low hill. Li Han’s suspicions grew, then eased. If Amara had wanted to kill him, any place would do. They had already passed plenty of abandoned fields.
