Black Star

CHAPTER 10 — MAI–LING

“Spy?” Tom took a drink of champagne and said, “That’s passé, Ray. Find some other job description. One that’s not so comic bookish.”

“How about traitor?” said Lutz.

“A meaningless concept,” said Tom. “At least to people like you and me. Traitor to what? That kind of Cold War sentimentality is reserved for all the simple-minded flag-wavers in the world.”

Lutz tossed down his Scotch. It occurred to him that he knew very little about Tom, but he was always amazed at the agent’s flippant attitude about the subject that could get them both snuffed out in a heartbeat. Tom had some kind of inner steel that Lutz could only imagine himself possessing.

Whenever they had this kind of dialogue in the casino, he did as Tom had taught him. He positioned himself next to one of the audio speakers so he could blend his voice into the din of the music. When he spoke, he shielded his lips with a glass, blocking any hidden surveillance cameras.

It was all part of being a spy. Or whatever job description Tom wanted to use.

“How about purveyor of information?” said Tom. “That’s a good one. Professional purveyor of vital information.”

Lutz shrugged. The truth was, he didn’t give a damn what they called him. Just so the money showed up in the account.

Sitting here in the bar, working on his third Scotch and still feeling the adrenaline rush of a successful transaction, he thought again how easy it had been to enter this business.

It started two months after he’d arrived at Groom Lake. That was when he realized that he had access to the most valuable military commodity in the world — the Black Star.

All he needed was a customer.

He wrote a page-long letter to the Consul General of the Peoples Republic of China in San Francisco. In the letter he explained the kind of work he performed at the research facility, and then he specified exactly how they should contact him.

Ten days later he was in the main casino of Caesar’s Palace, sitting at the third slot machine from the end, sixth row, exactly where he had said in the letter. It was six minutes before nine o’clock. His pulse was racing.

The arrangement had looked foolproof on paper. Now Lutz was beset by doubts. What if the letter had been intercepted? What if the FBI showed up? What if—

“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Mr. Lutz.” The voice belonged to the person next to him, playing the adjacent slot machine.

Lutz’s heart rate accelerated another twenty beats. “I… I play this machine every Friday,” he said, following the script in his letter.

“Fridays are better than Mondays.”

The words were correct. Meaningless but correct, right out of the letter he had written. Lutz kept his eyes on his machine but now he was curious about the player next to him. “Who are you?”

“You can call me Tom.”

He nodded. “My name is Raymond.”

“Excellent,” said Tom. “This is going extremely well. You see? We’re already on a first name basis.”

They continued talking, and some of the trepidation slipped away from Lutz. In his worst fears he had imagined that the Chinese, for whatever reason, might have turned him in. A team of FBI agents might have been waiting for him. Instead, there was Tom.

Still playing the slot machine, Tom explained how Lutz was to make the data drops. The timing and locations would change, conforming to no predictable pattern. Tom was his handler and would be his only contact.

They haggled briefly over Lutz’s compensation, then settled on a payment schedule. The total would amount to a hundred times more than Lutz had ever seen in his personal bank account.

Lutz began to feel giddy. He was beginning a whole new life. No longer was he wasting his finest skills on an undeserving client like the United States government. He was in control now. Master of his own destiny. He would extract justice for the disservice done him by his own country.

During the next months, Lutz learned that he had a taste for espionage. His engineer’s brain came up with unique ways to transmit the ultra-secret data of the Black Star project. He devised a method of micro-encryption, fitting the secrets of Calypso Blue into the interior of a gaming chip.

The physical act of transferring the chip never failed to fill him with terror. But despite his gnawing fear, he discovered that he craved the heart-pounding, dry-mouthed danger of the game. There was something addictive about it.

And something else. After each drop, Lutz found to his astonishment that he was as sexually excited as a bull in rutting season. He was invariably drawn like a magnet to the casino bar where he knew he would find the special blonde in the leather skirt.

“Gentlemen,” said Admiral Hightree as he stepped into the compartment, “our guests from Taiwan.”

The three Chinese had arrived aboard the Reagan’s C-2 COD — carrier on-board delivery — aircraft. Hightree had been there to meet them when they stepped onto the deck. He took them directly to the flag conference space.

Maxwell rose. So did CAG Boyce and Sticks Stickney, the Reagan’s skipper. Already standing at the end of the conference table were the two civilians — Ashby, the NSA analyst, and a bespectacled CIA officer named Salada, who was the assistant station chief in Taipei.

A moment of awkward silence passed as the Americans and the Chinese sized each other up.

“The senior military attaché in Taipei arranged this meeting,” said Hightree. “He thought it was urgent enough that we have this group flown out to the Reagan.”

Each wore a dark-olive battle dress uniform. They still had their flotation vests from the ride in the Reagan’s COD. The senior officer, an unsmiling man with a lined, hard-eyed face, brought his heels together and said, “I am Colonel Chiu Yusheng, commander of the Special Operations Branch, Republic of China Army. This is my adjutant, Major Wei-jin, and this is—” he nodded toward the third person in his group— “Captain Chen Mai-ling, formerly of the Peoples Liberation Army.

Hightree and Boyce exchanged a quick glance. Boyce looked at the woman again. “Excuse me, but I believe I heard that you—”

“You heard correctly,” said the woman. “Mainland China. Fujian Province. I arrived in Taiwan two months ago.”

Boyce nodded, still confused.

“Captain Chen is a defector,” said Colonel Chiu in stilted English. “I brought her to this meeting because she has information that we think your government might wish to have.”

From the end of the conference table, Maxwell studied the visitors. The woman was tall for a Chinese, about five-six. Even in the ill-fitting utilities, her figure was hard to conceal. There was something about her — long hair flowing beneath the black head band, the way she stood with one hip thrust outward — that didn’t fit the mold of a military officer.

She caught him studying her. For an instant their gazes locked. Maxwell forced himself not to look at her.

Hightree motioned for them all to take seats at the conference table. “I’ll remind everyone that everything discussed here is classified. No cellular devices or recorders will be permitted.”

Colonel Chiu sat next to Boyce. Noting Boyce’s gnawed cigar, he produced a pack of cigarettes. Without asking permission, he proffered the pack around, then lit up.

Boyce raised his eyebrows and looked over at Hightree. The admiral just shrugged.

Chiu exhaled a cloud of smoke and said, “Captain Chen claims that she was a technician on a secret PLA project at Chouzhou Air Base.”

“Not a technician,” the young woman said, drawing a scowl from Chiu. “Research scientist. And I’m no longer a captain in the PLA air force. That life is finished. For your information, I have a bachelor’s degree in thermodynamics, with graduate work in terahertz radiation.”

Maxwell studied the woman as she explained how she escaped China aboard one of the fishing junks that regularly ferried refugees from the mainland. Chiu interrupted her several times to explain that portions of her story could not be verified.

Maxwell watched them. It was obvious they didn’t hit off. Her English was nearly perfect, which made him curious. “Miss Chen,” he asked, “where did you do your graduate work?”

For a moment she gazed across the table at him. “In the United States. At Rensselaer Polytechnic, in Troy, New York. I studied there for two years.”

Maxwell nodded, keeping his face impassive. “Who was your professor?”

She gave him a quizzical look. “I had several. Dr. Ormsby, in photoelectric theory. Dr. Thornblad was my academic counselor. He lectured in the graduate physics department.”

“How about Professor Oglethorpe? Max Oglethorpe?”

“I don’t recall the name.”

“Where did you park your car when you entered Academy Hall?”

“Car?” Another quizzical look. “I didn’t have a car. Academy Hall was for undergraduates. I never went there.”

“How many columns are on the front of the Engineering Center?”

“Why are you asking these questions? Am I being interrogated?”

“Yes. How many columns?”

The almond eyes narrowed, watching him with wariness. “None. The Jonsson Engineering Center has a modern facade. No columns.”

“Good answer.”

“I take it you know something about Rensselaer,” she said.

“Something. I’m an alumnus.”

“Who is Professor Oglethorpe?”

“Nobody. I made him up.”

“To see if I was lying.”

“More like an authenticity check.”

“Does this mean I pass?” For another moment the eyes remained fixed on him.

“It means you went to Rensselaer. Or else you took the trouble to read a lot about the school.”

Colonel Chiu was watching them both with a sour expression. He crushed out his cigarette in a coffee saucer. “Let’s get to the reason we’re here. Captain Chen claims that a secret stealth aircraft is based at the PLA field at Chouzhou.”

“Not one,” she said. “Two, and by now perhaps more.”

“Have you seen these aircraft?” asked Boyce.

“Not in a finished state. I worked for two years on the development of the prototype. Six months ago, just as it was nearly ready to fly, I—”

“Defected,” said Chiu. He spat the word out as if it were something vile.

“Why did you defect?” Maxwell asked.

“Political reasons.” Again, the almond eyes. “My fiancé was a PLA air force major and a pilot. His name was Han Shaomin. He was arrested and accused of being a political dissident. He was sent to the Laogai—the PLA’s concentration camps. I was informed that he was later executed.”

“Was he a dissident?”

“He thought that the PLA was guilty of immoral conduct in suppressing the political minorities. If that made him a dissident, then I was one also.”

“For which she was willing to betray her country,” said Chiu. For a moment, the two exchanged another glowering look.

Boyce looked from one to the other. “It doesn’t matter to us why she’s here. What we want to know about is this stealth jet. If you will, Miss Chen, start from the beginning. Where did the technology come from?”

“Such information was not disclosed to me.”

“But you have an idea.”

“Of course. I presume it came from the United States.”

Boyce nodded. “And how do you think it came from the United States?”

“In the usual manner. Bought. Or stolen.”

“By whom?”

“That was never discussed. It was obvious that a great deal of secret information was flowing from the United States to China.”

“Jesus,” Boyce muttered and shook his head. “So tell us what you know about the — what do you call it?”

“Dong-jin. It translates roughly to something like Silent Wing.”

She went on, in considerable detail, about her work on the stealth project. She told them about the electrochromatic plasma technology that, when energized, rendered the Dong-jin’s shape nearly invisible in sunlight.

As she spoke, Maxwell followed her hands, watching her draw the invisible shape of the Dong-jin in the air. Again she caught him watching her. For a long moment the almond eyes locked on him.

When she was finished, a silence fell over the group. Maxwell looked around the table. He could sense each American thinking the same thing: an invisible killer — one they could neither see nor find — was hiding out there. And it belonged to China.

Finally Hightree pushed himself back from the table and stood. The other officers rose in unison. The meeting was over. The Americans shook hands with the Chinese, thanking them for the information.

Maxwell was the last. As he clasped the woman’s hand, she held the handshake a few seconds longer than necessary.

“I enjoyed hearing about Rensselaer,” he said.

“I liked it there,” she said. “Maybe I’ll go back someday.” Still holding his hand, she said, “Zaijian, Commander Maxwell.”

He looked at her quizzically. “Which means…”

“Good bye,” she said. “Until we meet again.”

He smiled. “Zaijian, Miss Chen.”

Chiu gave them both a scowl of disapproval. “Let’s go,” he said. “Our business here is finished.”

“Was I imagining or what?” Boyce was tilted back in his desk chair, looking at Maxwell. “Did I observe some kind of basic hormonal chemistry bubbling between you and that Chinese girl?”

Maxwell shrugged. “We both went to RPI.”

“Right. When old classmates get together, they always ogle each other like minks in heat.”

“She’s just glad to have someone to talk to. She has to deal with that hardass, Colonel Chiu.”

“He seems to have a low opinion of defectors, even a foxy one like your classmate, Miss Chen.” Boyce jammed his cigar back in his mouth and rose from the chair. “You heard her story. Never mind that you think she’s got a cute butt. Is she telling the truth?”

“The part about Rensselaer was on the mark. It would be stupid of her to fake something like that because she knows we’ll check it out. The stuff about the Black Star — the thing she calls Dong-jin—was spooky. Like she just came from Dreamland after working on the Calypso Blue project. She had too many details right. She couldn’t know about that stuff unless she’d seen it.”

Boyce seemed not to hear. He was on his feet, gnawing the cigar, staring at some object in infinite space.

Maxwell was getting a bad feeling. He’d seen that look before. Boyce was on to something, and it meant trouble.

The questions were stupid. And terrifying.

Lutz reclined in his desk chair and did his best to appear bored. He doodled on a notepad while the agents asked their questions. His heart was pumping like a steam engine.

“Who did you spend last weekend with?”

“Myself.”

“Doing what, Doctor Lutz?”

“Gambling. Watching a show.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“That’s my business. Am I accused of something?”

“We’re just trying to establish your routine, how you spend your off time.´

“My off time is my own affair.”

“Do you ever hire a prostitute, Doctor Lutz?”

Lutz took a moment before he answered. They probably knew about his habits in the casino. If so, they would know about the hooker in the leather skirt. They wanted him to lie about it.

“I regard women as I do boats and airplanes,” he said, trying to keep the tone light, “I prefer to rent.”

The FBI agent’s name was Swinford. He didn’t smile. “Do you always rent the same one?”

“That’s my business, not yours.”

“Correct,” said the agent. “You’re not required to tell us anything. However, you should understand that it is our prerogative, if we feel you’re concealing sensitive information, to place you under custody and continue this interrogation at our regional office in Las Vegas.”

Lutz nodded. This jerk was used to getting his way, scaring the shit out of people with that stuff about placing them under custody and continuing the interrogation. Typical bullying tactics.

But it was working. Lutz was scared.

He forced himself to appear impassive. Don’t let them see that you’re nervous. Don’t talk too much. “It might be helpful if you gentlemen would tell me the purpose of this interrogation.”

Swinford said, “We’re investigating possible… hypothetical breaches of security at the facility. This happens to be a high priority project, you know. We just like to run routine checks.”

“What you mean is, there’s been a leak.”

The agents exchanged glances. “Why would you think that?”

“I’ve been here long enough. This isn’t a routine check. You people are digging for something, these asinine questions about my sex life.”

“What we want is for you to tell us about your routine. Talk us through your work day, how you secure the data you work with, what you do when you leave for the day or the weekend.”

Lutz hesitated. “What I do here is classified top secret.”

“We have top secret clearances.”

“It doesn’t matter what your clearance is. I’m not at liberty to talk about it.”

Swinford produced a letter and laid it on Lutz’s desk. “Notice the signature. That’s the director of the research facility. The letter says that you will tell us everything we want to know about your job. If you have a problem with that, Doctor, pick up the phone and ask him yourself.”

Lutz didn’t bother reading the letter. He didn’t need to call. The bastards had the keys to the kingdom.

He told them about his routine. He kept it loosely detailed, explaining how at the end of the day he deleted sensitive data from his hard disk, how the codes for access to the data base were stored, how the software scrubbing program worked. In theory, nothing classified ever left his lab on paper or in digital form. Every byte of data was encrypted and maintained and stored in the facility’s optical storage network.

As he explained the process, he watched Swinford’s expression, trying to determine how much the man understood about the arcane technologies of data encryption and transmission. Not much, he judged. Swinford had that furrowed-brow look, like a man faking something he hadn’t a clue about. Cops. They were like characters from comic books.

He finished the explanation. Swinford scribbled some notes, then said, “Okay, that’s your routine. How about your colleagues? Have you ever noticed anything — you know, peculiar behavior, a habit pattern, a comment — that would suggest someone might be violating the security restrictions on the Calypso Blue project?”

Lutz nodded. There it was. They were telling him what they were looking for. Even the name of the stealth jet development project — Calypso Blue — was so secret no one knew it except those with the very highest clearance.

So they knew about the Black Star.

“You mean, have I ever suspected someone of leaking data?”

“Not suspected, necessarily. Just something that didn’t quite fit. You know, someone whose behavior was a… little bit odd.”

Lutz almost laughed. A little bit odd. That described half the research and development community. Research scientists were, by definition, a little bit odd. Some more than a little.

But this was good. At least, they were getting away from questions about him and the hooker in the leather skirt. He was beginning to relax now. And as he relaxed, he had the glimmering of an idea.

“Well, there was something…” He caught himself, shook his head, then said, “No, never mind. It wouldn’t mean anything to you.”

Swinford perked up, like a dog seeing a bone. “What wouldn’t mean anything?”

“Oh, it was just… no, it doesn’t have any significance.”

“Let us be the judge of that, Doctor. Tell us everything you’ve observed, and we’ll sort out what’s significant and what isn’t.”

Lutz put on a pained expression. “Well, I really don’t think it means anything. But one of my colleagues, a fellow named Feingold—”

“Herbert Feingold?” Swinford was leafing through his notebook. “Works in the RAM lab of Calypso Blue?” The furrowed-brow look again. “What does RAM mean?”

“Radar absorbent material. Feingold is a physicist.”

“Okay, fine. What about him?”

“Well, just that lately it seems that Herb — he’s a bachelor too — seems to be spending a lot of money.”

“On what?”

“Oh, the night life I guess you’d call it. He’s taken up heavy gambling, something he didn’t do before. He always loses a bundle, thousands sometimes, which he never seems to mind.”

Swinford was writing furiously in his notepad. “Where do you think he gets the money?”

“I wouldn’t want to—”

“But you have an idea.”

Lutz shook his head. “I know what you’re suggesting, but it doesn’t make sense. It’s just too hard to believe that a guy like Herb Feingold would ever do anything, you know, disloyal.” He looked at the three agents. “But there were those little hints. I guess you just never know about some people, do you?”

Maxwell was right. Boyce was up to something.

They were alone in the air wing office. Boyce had sent Catfish Bass off to flag plot to retrieve the day’s air plan. He was taking special pleasure in having the Air Force pilot run errands for him. Bass invariably got lost wandering the passageways, still bashing his shins into the knee knockers. Boyce loved it.

Now Maxwell was seeing all the usual warning signals. Boyce was pacing the narrow compartment like a caged bear, gnawing on the cigar, hands jammed in his pockets.

He made one more circuit of the compartment, then stopped and removed his cigar. “Okay, now hear this. I’ve got an idea. We have to run it by the admiral, of course, and when he cleans out his underwear he’s gonna forward it up the chain. This one will go all the way to the commander-in-chief. But this President has a set of balls. I’ll bet a case of twelve-year-old Scotch that he signs off on it.”

“Signs off on what?”

“The Black Star, Chinese version.”

Maxwell could hear the warning bells, loud and clear, going off on his head. “Ah, what exactly are we going to do, CAG?”

“Do?” He removed the cigar and looked at Maxwell as if he were a retarded sixth-grader. “What do you think? We’re going to steal their little toy.”