Emerald Buddha

Chapter 10

Jiao Long sat at the long rectangular conference table, facing his superior, Xiaoping Wu, the second-highest-ranking member of the MSS. Next to him was a nervous technician in charge of analyzing the servers that had been removed from Moontech’s headquarters.

Xiaoping listened impatiently as Jiao gave his report. When he was finished, Xiaoping leaned forward, lit a cigarette, and exhaled a pungent gray cloud at the overhead light.

“So this Huang didn’t know anything? He wasn’t in bed with Liu?” he growled.

Jiao nodded. “I’m confident he wasn’t.”

“Will he make it?”

“No. He suffered a stroke during our interrogation. He’s on life support now, but not expected to regain consciousness.”

Xiaoping grunted and tapped ash from his cigarette into a porcelain ashtray, taking care to shape the ember with the side — a peculiar habit Jiao had seen too many times to count. “Then what does that leave us with?”

Jiao looked to the technician, who began speaking in a soft, almost feminine voice. “There’s no question that the intrusion into our computers came from Moontech. But when we were going through the logs, I found an anomaly that was very interesting. It appears that the attack on our system was directed remotely, via a Trojan horse that was able to co-opt one of the Moontech servers and make it look like the operator was in the building.”

Xiaoping waved an annoyed hand. “We know that.”

“Yes, well, what was interesting was that we were not the only target.”

“Don’t play games. Spit it out.”

“It looks like Liu was accessing the U.S. Department of Defense network. Their internal, most sensitive servers.”

“What?” Xiaoping exclaimed. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. The signature is… let’s just say that it’s distinctive.”

“How? We’ve been trying to crack that for years. We’ve never been able to do it,” Jiao demanded.

“I’m not sure. That’s the puzzling part. But he was able to gain access.”

Xiaoping took another deep drag on his cigarette and his expression grew pensive. Nobody spoke until he stubbed the butt out and nodded. “We need to understand what he was doing. This significantly complicates matters. The Americans’ DOD is the best-fortified network in the world. If Liu was fishing around in there, we need answers.”

The technician cleared his throat. “There is one more thing.”

Both older men stared at him. “What’s that?” Jiao asked.

“It looks like I may be able to reproduce the protocol that enabled him to access their servers.”

If the technician had levitated around the room, it would have had less impact on Xiaoping and Jiao.

Jiao’s eyes narrowed and he gave the younger man an appraising stare. “The hell you say.”

The technician nodded. “It’s true. I’ll need some time, but there still might be enough on the server to put the pieces together.”

Xiaoping sat back. “If you can do that, I’ll promote you to the highest possible position. You should be running our cyber efforts.”

The technician smiled nervously. “I will do my best.”

“Don’t sit here any longer, then. Go do it,” said Xiaoping. “Report to me at any hour of the day or night if you get through. But… the Americans cannot know it’s us. Under any circumstances. That would be disastrous.”

“Oh, I’ll bounce it through a half-dozen servers. They’ll never suspect.”

“I thought you told us that’s what Liu did,” Jiao said.

“He didn’t know about the program I wrote that could trace it back through to the source. It technically doesn’t exist. Except it does. And we have it.” The technician smirked like a guilty schoolboy. “I could explain exactly how it works, if you’re interested.”

Xiaoping shook his head. “I care about results. Don’t waste any more time with talk. This is the highest priority. Commandeer whatever resources you need. I cannot underscore its importance enough.”

The technician rose. “I will report when I have a solution.”

Jiao and Xiaoping watched as the slight man left the conference room, and stood for a moment without speaking, considering all they’d just learned.

“This could be an enormous breakthrough,” Xiaoping said.

“Yes, but what troubles me the most is that we have no idea what this Liu was doing in the DOD servers to begin with. If you recall, we thought he was trying to sabotage our systems, which is why we took such… swift action.”

“At your recommendation, as I remember it.”

“Which perhaps was an overreaction, in light of his achievement. Our very best have been banging their heads into that wall for a decade, with no success.” Jiao looked off into space. “Hard to believe a single rogue amateur could do what a team of a hundred top programmers couldn’t.”

“There was only one Einstein, too. Occasionally one man sees something the majority misses. I suspect that’s the case this time.” Xiaoping stood. “But we can’t take back what is already done. Our best hope lies with our new prodigy, since we blew the old one out of the sky.”

“At the time it seemed the prudent course. The penalty for espionage is death. We simply saved the tribunal the effort of trying him.”

“As with most things, nothing is ever completely black or white.”

Jiao remained seated as his boss left the room, the only sound the faint hiss of the air-conditioning and the steady ticking of the wall clock. He rubbed his eyes, which constantly burned from the pollution that was a regular feature of China’s large industrial cities. The rebuke in Xiaoping’s tone had been as plain as a backhand, although delivered subtly, as was his way. Jiao had made an informed decision to sabotage the plane in which Liu had been fleeing the country. There was no way he could have been expected to second-guess that the dead man had posed no threat they could find, at least not to China. To the U.S.?

The first thing they needed to learn was what Liu had been doing in the DOD system. Once they understood that, then they could take appropriate action. But at the very least, having a clandestine window into the Americans’ deepest military secrets would be of incalculable value to the MSS.

It could well shift the balance of power, wherein the U.S. presently held most of the cards. With ten aircraft carriers to China’s one, and a military budget that dwarfed the next twenty-six industrialized nations combined, the U.S. projected its agenda through superior firepower as well as through its financial system. If China had access to its plans, it could take steps to block those most harmful to China’s interests, and prevent the American war machine from dominating at least China’s piece of the global pie.

What had Liu been after?

The question haunted Jiao as he rose and moved to the door, his tread that of a far older man than had entered the room only minutes before.