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He turns away and gets out of the house, running to his Jeep Wrangler, hurrying to get away from here and the District of Columbia.
He gets in, starts it up, and backs onto the street without even looking. At the first stop sign, Liam reaches up to the windshield, tears down the transponder for toll roads in the state of Virginia, and at the first service station he comes to, pulls over, parks, and tosses it into the rear of a Chevy pickup truck bearing Maryland plates.
Then he continues going north, driving with one hand while working hard to take out the SIM card from his powered-off phone.
There are hunters out there in the darkness, and he knows they’re now coming after him.
CHAPTER 60
IN THE SENSITIVE compartmented information facility in the subbasement of the Chinese Embassy on International Place Northwest, Xi Dejiang of the Chinese Ministry of State Security looks to his assistant, Sun Zheng, and says, “That’s one hell of an escalation from the Americans.”
Zheng says, “The investigation isn’t completed yet, but what is known is that the city of Jieyang, in Guangdong Province, suffered a major utility blackout about twelve hours ago, and it looks like sabotage.”
Dejiang says, “Really?”
His assistant passes over a red folder. “Without a doubt. There’s a substance, graphite fibers—looks like fine silk or thread—that if deposited over a sensitive area of a switchyard or electrical substation, causes a system-wide short circuit, blacking out a portion of the city. This portion, sir, included our Building 14.”
“From Unit 212, conducting cyberspace operations.”
“Correct.”
“Was the building or its equipment damaged?”
“No, but it’ll be out of service for a few days, at least.”
“How did the graphite fibers get there? Hand grenades or something similar?”
His assistant shakes his head as Dejiang opens the folder, reads the first few sentences and says, “A cruise missile?”
Zheng says, “No doubt, sir. Witnesses saw it fly over the area, and saw it eject objects, which were the bomb canisters carrying the graphite fibers. Then the missile self-destructed over the Rangjiang River in the middle of the city. The local harbor police and a boat from the PLA Navy are dragging the area now.”
He continues to read the dispatch, then closes the folder.
“A cruise missile,” he says. “This isn’t one of their ‘freedom of the seas’ ship passage. It’s an escalation.”
What to do?
Despite publicly following the aggressive Party line and doing his intelligence job to the best of his abilities, Dejiang has come to admire the way these people live, learn, and work.
His son is at Harvard Business School, and he enjoys the brief moments he’s been allowed to visit him up in Boston, seeing how his boy has thrived without being under the heavy thumb of the Party.
Secretly, Dejiang also sees his role in DC as being an unofficial intermediary, preventing these two Colossi from stumbling into a confrontation.
Or worse, a war.
He glances at the framed photo of old Admiral Zheng He. His had been a powerful military fleet back then, charting new lands, but it was also a fleet filled with trade goods. The fist and the open hand.
What would you do here, Admiral?he thinks.
“It’s a provocation,” Dejiang says. “But what is the point? They’ve rolled up some of our networks here in the United States, understandable. But to strike at our homeland like this? Unheard of.”
His assistant says, “The generals in the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission are probably howling for retaliation at this moment.”
He takes a moment to think, lighting up a Marlboro. He knows he should be seen smoking the semi-official cigarette of the Party—Chunghwa—but despite their many faults, the Americans do know their tobacco.
Dejiang says, “Let’s get ahead of the military. We’ll send an emissary to President Barrett. See if we can learn what is driving him. A cruise missile attack like this would only come from his direction. No underling in their military would dare do such a thing.”
“The ambassador?”