DoD effectively takes over Op-Center, and the president pulls its top guy out to keep him close. That doesn’t sound like rewarding Paul Hood for services rendered. Plus, we’ve got marines at our disposal. I was talking to Mike about that before. Striker redux. It sounds like a strategic realignment.”
“That could be,” Hood agreed. “Why do you assume that’s a bad thing?”
“When I was a kid back in Neshoba County, we had a problem with the deer population after a dry spring. They were moving in on the resorts, the golf clubs, eating everything they could. The mayor and the board of aldermen of Philadelphia recommended that we send a team of environmentalists into these areas to do a complete study of the problem. Most of those guys were hunters. By the end of the summer the deer population was no longer a problem. In fact, it was damn near invisible. Except in the venison counters at the meat markets. You can solve problems or you can pick off the parts of them that are unlucky enough to show their heads. I’m afraid that we’re starting to look for quick fixes instead of permanent ones.”
“Whacking the weeds instead of uprooting them,” Hood said.
“Yeah. Same thing, if you like aphorisms instead of folksy narratives,” Herbert joked.
“That’s my years as a homeowner talking,” Hood replied. And as soon as he said it he felt that pinch of anger at Sharon again. He always liked doing the lawn, especially when the kids were younger and went out to “help” by pulling up dandelions or raking leaves to jump in. Hood got himself out of that place quickly. “Look, Bob. The future of American intelligence is not our concern at the moment.”
“True, true,” Herbert said. “I’m letting it go. But the operative phrase is ‘at the moment.’ I don’t want to be caught with my drawers down when it does become our concern. It’s the Big RB. It’s Liz Gordon’s white paper.”
“I know,” Hood said.
“There are moral issues at stake, but more importantly, there are tactical ones,” Herbert said. “I’m not a patriot for a paycheck, Paul. If I think something is wrong, I’m going to fight it.”
The words “And I’ll be fighting at your side” snagged in the back of Hood’s throat. He was not afraid to take on the DoD. What scared him was civil war between American government factions at a time when the nation needed to be united. Even if the weeds were not eradicated, containing them was better than ignoring them while the intelligence departments fought.
“I hope it won’t come to that,” Hood said.
“Spoken like a newly minted diplomat,” Herbert replied.
Hood could hear the disappointment in Herbert’s voice, but he refused to let it bother him. This was not about Bob Herbert’s approval. It was about preventing the nation from being drawn into Chinese politics.
“The problem with globalization,” Liz wrote in a cautionary summation, “is that all of those worlds do intersect now, and in more layers than anyone can successfully isolate, study, and chart.”
In other words, like Bob Herbert said, it was a Big RB ready to pop. And maybe, Hood thought, the DoD was preparing to deal with it in a way that did not isolate, study, or chart.
Hood took his laptop from his briefcase and booted it. He wanted to have a close look at the party list, make sure he knew the players. He also had a walk around the library. He pulled out a current encyclopedia yearbook so he could read up on National Day. He was a guest in a strange land and wanted to know something of their history and customs.
As Hood did his research, he could not help feeling that his efforts were sluggish and obsolete. He did not feel like a hunter. Perhaps he was experiencing some of what Herbert felt.
If you’re not a hunter, you’re venison.
THIRTY
After ten years in the business, Shek had talked his way out of a job. He was happy it turned out that way.
When he was a boy, Yuan “the Emperor” Shek used to look forward to his mother coming to his room and singing him a good night song. His favorite was “The World Beneath the Stone of Farmer Woo.” It seems the farmer had to move a large stone in his field in order to plant corn. But when he did so, he found all manner of insects and tunnels, nests and roots, and even a family of field mice. Food came and went in organized supply lines, “Many ants with many legs in service of the empress.” At the end of the song the farmer replaced the rock and grew his crops around it.
Young Shek lived in the back of the schoolhouse where his mother was the only teacher. His father was a soldier who was rarely home. There were plenty of rocks in a field behind the school. Most of them were too small to conceal more than a few bugs or small snakes. Shek was not strong enough to move the larger rocks, where he imagined the riches to be much greater.
One day, when his father was home, the older man showed his son how to get the rock to move. Not with a lever but with gunpowder. Carefully placed in cracks or under the edges, the tiny charges made Shek the master of the field. He even wrote a little song about himself, “The Emperor of the Empress Ant.”
Explosives became a very big — and profitable — part of Shek’s life. From a soldier friend who sometimes visited with his father, the boy learned how to manufacture explosives using fertilizer and other ingredients. Shek put them to work moving rocks for fun, creating popping toys to celebrate birthdays or holidays, and even for pest control. He taught himself how to set off charges using a slight amount of pressure applied to a trigger plate — in this case, pieces of bark peeled from trees. His small Emperor Mousetraps were a big seller in the village. He pedaled them from a small, flat rock along the main road until his mother found out what he was doing. She lent him a card table from the school.
She believed in doing things right.
Shek’s father died in a truck accident when the boy was twelve. Teaching had never been very profitable for his mother, and the widow’s pension from the military was extremely meager. Shek’s sideline became an important part of their income. He made increasingly sophisticated fireworks, flares, and even custom demolitions for local builders. Without the benefit of an education, Emperor Shek became a master of his craft. Best of all, there was no record of his skill in military or scholastic records. He was what the intelligence trade called an invisible.
When Chou Shin learned of this talented young man, he hired him for the 8341 Unit. Chou immediately set Shek and his mother up in a small but comfortable cottage in Yu Xian, a Beijing suburb. The structure was isolated and had a shed out back for Shek’s work, which was building bombs for the Central Security Regiment. The explosives were not simply for use by the CSR. Many of them were employed by the military for covert land and sea mines, illegal armaments that would not be traced to Beijing. Even more were given over for off-the-books ballistics. These were passed to rebels fighting in foreign lands, where destabilization benefited Beijing by involving enemy forces in distracting struggles at home.
Shek was always busy, though he was never rushed. His employer recognized that he was an artist who could hide explosives inside donuts for transport or bake them into ceramic goods that would explode spectacularly in a microwave oven or conventional oven. Those were good for assassinations.
