The Art of War

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Kat Spiers managed to convince Harold and Ellie that they must leave. They refused to go, of course, as she had predicted, until she figuratively dropped the bomb: The Chinese were believed to have a nuclear warhead secreted at the naval base, and while the navy was looking, it might detonate at any time.

Being very human and mortal, Harold and Ellie agreed to leave. No one got any sleep that night, waiting, waiting … for the detonation. The next morning Harold called the college and pleaded a death in the family. He would return, he said, for the beginning of the next semester. Ellie e-mailed the women who were coming to the baby shower and said that, due to a death in Harold’s family, it would have to be postponed. She would let them know.

Then they packed and got on the road about noon. Kat drove. Through the Hampton Roads Tunnel and up the interstate toward Richmond. They were so frightened they didn’t relax until they were almost to Fredericksburg, when they decided to pull off and eat a late lunch at a Cracker Barrel restaurant.

The trio ate in silence, each absorbed with his or her own thoughts. Now that they were safe, relatively, the enormity of the disaster that might engulf every one of their friends weighed on them. Oh, Kat had stressed that they couldn’t tell anyone, because the information was classified and might lead to panic. Mass panic. And if the media got it, it might even cause the triggerman to detonate the weapon.

Heavy, Harold thought. Very heavy. Then he began thinking of his friends. He had a few he trusted, friends he knew who wouldn’t tell anyone else, who would appreciate the opportunity to escape. If they knew. And what if he didn’t tell them and the bomb went off? How would he live with that? It is one thing, he thought, to take your wife and her unborn child to safety, but leaving your friends to die when it would be so easy to warn them?

He made up his mind, and while he waited for his entrée to arrive at the table, he excused himself and went to the men’s room. Sitting on a throne, he got out his cell phone and turned it on. He had six friends that he thought would do the same for him, if they knew. So he sent them an e-mail. The Chinese were believed to have a bomb at the Norfolk naval base. He had it on excellent authority that the navy was looking, but they might be too late. He advised his friends to leave the area. And, of course, not to tell any of their friends about this. No Facebook, no e-mails, no Twitter, no nothing. Just pack and go. Somewhere safe.

Then he pushed the SEND button and the little telephone sucked the e-mail into cyberspace.

He went back to the table and felt a little better. Yeah, he was taking his family to safety, but he had given his friends a warning. They had families, too. He attacked his hamburger.

Ellie played with her salad. Ate some of it and drank unsweetened ice tea. When she finished, she went to the restroom, taking her purse. She consulted her contact list. Thought about each one as she selected the name. The message ultimately had ten names, after she put over a dozen on and deleted a few after deliberation. She demanded that they tell no one else what she told them. She knew they wouldn’t, because they were trustworthy and they would understand that the news could cause catastrophic damage if it got out. There were another twenty or so people on her list of contacts that Ellie wished she could tell, because they were so nice, but she knew she couldn’t rely upon them to keep the secret, so she sent no warning. She told herself she was just being realistic and, being Ellie, dismissed the moral dilemma of warning some friends and not others without further thought.

When Ellie returned to the dining room, Kat excused herself. She too went to the ladies. She had two good friends from church, almost like sisters, who lived in the Virginia Beach suburbs. They weren’t military, nor were their husbands. They had grown children and several grandkids. She told them the news she had gotten from her husband, not mentioning her source, and advised the strictest secrecy. Although she knew they would know her husband had told her — that was the power of the warning and the reason it would be believed — it wasn’t fair to him to name him. She advised her two girlfriends to get out of the area as quickly as possible, taking their families with them. If nothing happened, well and good. If something did, at least they would be safe. And say nothing to anyone.

She sent the message and took a deep breath. Butler would be angry she sent it, but he would understand. It was he who had demanded she leave the area with her daughter and son-in-law. And the baby soon to be born. What a world this child would arrive in!

Feeling she had done her duty to her closest friends, both Christian ladies who had endured their share of adversity and then some, while not betraying her husband, Kat walked back to the table, left a cash tip, took the bill to the register, paid it with a credit card and accompanied Ellie and Harold to the parking lot and the waiting car.

Sitting behind the wheel with her seat belt on, she sent a text to Butler, who was probably in it up to his eyeballs. “In Fredericksburg,” she typed. She put the phone in her purse, started the car and put it in gear. He never received the text. Kat didn’t know it, but cell phone service to the Norfolk metropolitan area had been disabled on order of the military authorities. For the duration of the security exercise. However, the e-mails the trio had sent did go through, on landlines. The recipients would find them when they turned on their hardwired computers.

At one o’clock in the afternoon Captain Joe Child’s SEALs finished searching the Craney Island Corps of Engineers Depot, across the broad mouth of the Elizabeth River from the carrier piers. They had been at it since dawn. Hundreds of acres of mountains of silt and mud dredged from the mouth of the Elizabeth River and the Hampton Roads estuary over the years made the task one of the labors of Hercules. To truly search that morose, stinking landscape would take a half-dozen bulldozers and a hundred man-years. All his forty men could do was walk over it with metal detectors and look for anything suspicious. That they had done.

Then they tackled the monstrous junkyard of old naval equipment. Bulldozers, vehicles of every kind and description, equipment that went on the highway or didn’t, things taken off ships, stuff no one could name and stuff that was probably a worn-out one-off constructed for some project long forgotten — they looked, concluded that there was nothing there and gathered around their team leaders. Buses were waiting to take them to the next areas on the list. Child used a landline to call Admiral McKiernan, who had demanded to be kept personally informed.

McKiernan called Jake Grafton, who was at CIA headquarters in Langley. “They’ve done Craney Island,” he said. “Results negative. The SEALs said it was like searching a hog pen for a diamond.”

“It must be in the water, under a Carley float, on a tug or barge, somewhere in that yard.”

“Or on a ship. Or it isn’t there at all. I am beginning to like the idea it is on a boat that will come roaring in off the Chesapeake.”

Jets were overhead, helicopters were buzzing around, the base was sealed due to the “routine security exercise,” and Patriot missile batteries were standing by in case anyone penetrated the prohibited zone the FAA had established over the Hampton Roads area. The Coast Guard and navy patrol boats from the amphib base at Little Creek were patrolling around the clock.

“It’s not on a boat,” Jake said. “Too iffy. Too many things can go wrong. It’s there now. It was there yesterday and it hasn’t moved.”

At two o’clock Sarah Houston came in with Jerry Chu’s laptop, thumb drive and cell phones. “I’ve gotten everything I could and sent the rest to NSA. Maybe some of the mathematicians can make something of the crypto stuff, but it will take a long time.” As Jake knew, NSA employed more Ph.D. mathematicians than any other company, university or government agency on the planet.

“Phones?”

“We have the numbers and are working them. Nothing for Zoe Kerry. But you knew there probably wouldn’t be. If she calls him or he calls her, they will ditch the phone.”

And ditto the watcher, Jake thought. If Jerry Chu had a number, it was in his head. And he’d never tell.

“Get a car and take that stuff over to the FBI. Sign a chain-of-custody form and get signatures when you turn it over. Then come back here. You and I need to talk about China.”

“Yes, sir.” She walked out with Tommy’s trophies.

The autumn leaves were all gone, but the sun was out in the mountains of Virginia. I drove along with the top down and the heater going, taking my time. I thought about Anna for a while, then about our times together, all too brief, and then about nothing at all. I wondered where Zoe Kerry was. Not in the States, I decided. She was long gone. Not to China. I couldn’t visualize her in China. She was a Europe kind of person. Germany or France, maybe Switzerland or Italy. Not the Balkans. Not Russia. Certainly not the Middle East or Egypt.

But somewhere.

Gradually she faded and there was only the road, the mountains covered with a forest of naked trees, waiting for snow. Waiting for winter. Under a clear blue sky with lots of sun.

When I die, I want to be buried on a day like this. A day sent from heaven.

The plastic urn with Anna’s ashes was beside me, strapped into the passenger seat with the seat belt so it wouldn’t come open in a crash. It was actually a small urn. They had cremated everything they could salvage, they said, but she was so close to the bomb …

The good news was that she hadn’t felt a thing. Here one heartbeat and then gone forever. No transition. Just … gone.

Maybe Anna was lucky. I don’t know. No old age, no debilitating illnesses, no nursing homes and endless painful medical procedures, no wishing her life had gone differently, no waiting for the inevitable end, no wondering when it would come … None of that. Boom. And she was gone.

But that bomb robbed her of a lot of good years. Robbed me of what might have been. Robbed us both of the happiness we so deeply anticipated. If life had worked out the way we wanted. So few things in life do. Work out the way you want, that is.

Another little tragedy. In a world full of them.

Aaugh! God damn it all to hell.

I drove through Hot Springs, by the Homestead, and took the two-lane highway south. Up the highway a ways I turned left on a side road, following the airport signs. Met no traffic. Wound all the way to the top of the mountain to the airport and parked next to the only vehicle in the lot beside the little fixed-base operator’s terminal, a ten-year-old pickup. Went in and looked around.

“Can I help you?” the man at the counter asked. There were no airplanes on the ramp.

“Just looking.”

I went back to the car, started down the hill. At the first overlook I pulled off. Unstrapped the urn, got out and stood looking over the mountains stretching away into the haze to the west. Looked at a hawk up high, circling. Tested the wind. It was from the southeast. No cars here, nor did I hear anyone pulling the grade.

I opened the urn and trickled the ashes out. The breeze caught them and whisked them away toward the valley below. Some of the bigger pieces reached the ground, pieces of bone maybe; the little stuff was lost on the wind. The rain and melting snow this winter would make the ashes part of the earth.

Good-bye, Anna.

When the urn was empty, I put the cap back on, got in the car and headed back down the mountain, back to Washington.

Zhang and Choy Lee spent the day aboard his Boston Whaler fishing offshore of old Fort Monroe in Hampton, across the roadstead from the mouth of the Elizabeth River. At least, Choy fished. Zhang sat at the helm with binoculars and watched the helicopters flying here and there over the base and the open water, the jets running high, navy harbor boats with a machine gun on the bow and two Coast Guard patrol craft. This activity was more than he had seen since he arrived in America, but Choy had translated the newspaper story about a “routine security exercise.”

Zhang bought it. He knew the lengths his navy went to when their sole operational aircraft carrier, Liaoning, was in port, entering, exiting or under way. She was formerly a Soviet carrier, Varyag, bought from a Ukrainian shipyard 70 percent complete and towed on an epic voyage to the Dalian shipyard in China, where, after much study, her hull was completed and she was fitted with engines, radars, arresting gear and all the equipment necessary to turn the unfinished hull into a real warship, a carrier of armed warplanes that could project Chinese power for many hundreds of miles.

The Chinese also purchased three other retired carriers, hulks, incapable of operating aircraft, that they studied for years: the Australian carrier HMAS Melbourne and the former Soviet carriers Minsk and Kiev. Finally Melbourne was partially dismantled, and the two ex-Russian carriers were converted to resort/amusement parks to favorably impress the public with the future of their navy. For a reasonable amount, you and your wife, girlfriend or concubine could sleep, gamble and drink aboard a real warship. However, until these hulks were scrapped or converted, the PLAN had kept a watchful eye on them with harbor craft and helicopters. Liaoning, now operational and equipped with Shenyang J-5 fighters, was guarded day and night.

Unlike these complacent Americans, Zhang thought, the three Chinese fleet naval bases were closed to civilian maritime traffic. And spies.

Actually, the American navy’s security operations were what he expected. Five aircraft carriers in port at one time, plus several helicopter assault carriers, was a juicy target. Better than Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. Much better. The Americans weren’t such fools that they didn’t know that. Yet the Chinese preparations were adequate. The attack would be a success.

He glanced at Choy Lee from time to time. Choy’s usefulness was almost at an end. He thought Choy might suspect that, so he would have to be watched carefully. He seemed quite calm today. Had even caught a couple of fish, one big enough to keep.

Fortunately the day was fairly benign, with broken high clouds that the sun peeked through from time to time, not too much wind and only light chop. Six or seven miles visibility. Zhang lit another cigarette and went back to scanning with his binoculars and checking the radar presentation from time to time.

He was watching when he saw the blip of a large ship appear on the scope, trailed by two smaller ones, passing Point Comfort, heading into the bay. Using the binoculars, he saw a helicopter assault ship and two destroyers emerge from the haze, like ghost ships becoming real, on course westward, no doubt to moor at the carrier piers at the naval base. As she steamed along he watched her with his binoculars. She was a gorgeous gray ship, not as big as Liaoning, but impressive. Helicopters filled her flight deck.

He would, he decided, motor into the mouth of the Elizabeth River later this afternoon, at least an hour before darkness fell, for a look around. Then he would fill the tanks of the Whaler at the marina. Again. He filled them every evening, just in case.

Choy Lee would have been relieved if he had known Zhang thought him calm today. He had a big decision to make, and he was sorting his options. Since he hadn’t decided what to do, he was here today, to give himself more time to think, and to watch Zhang and see if he could get a hint of Zhang’s mission and plans. Choy sensed that Zhang’s expectations were rising. He was more tense, never smiled, never made a joke. He is waiting. For what?

For the American carriers. Obviously. But why?

Zhang was watching the helicopter carrier now.

Should he tell Sally Chan of his suspicions? Would she go with him if he disappeared? Or would she demand he call the navy or FBI and tell them what he knew, and suspected? What would become of him if he did?

Bored, he took his cell phone from his pocket and turned it on. No service. Maybe he was too far from a tower.

But there should be cell service out here. There always had been.

He pocketed the phone. Thought about telling Zhang.

Something made him refrain. Zhang was using the binoculars again.

Oh God. What to do?

He went back to fishing.

The e-mails from Kat Spiers and her daughter, Ellie, and son-in-law, Harold, started a firestorm in cyberspace. By the time they were on the Washington, DC, Beltway, over ten thousand people in the Norfolk/Portsmouth/Virginia Beach area had seen some version of one or more of the e-mails and were forwarding them on to friends, acquaintances and co-workers. People from all walks of life received the news with varying degrees of belief and disbelief. Some thought the whole thing was a joke and said so. Others weren’t so sure. Some people merely forwarded on the e-mail they received; others undertook to rewrite the message on other websites. The Chinese had a dozen bombs hidden on the naval base. Airplanes were going to drop bombs. Intercontinental ballistic missiles were going to wipe out the fleet. The missiles were already in the air. Or they were being prepared for launch. Some folks even added that the security exercise at the base was a war preparation.

A great many of the people who received these messages or read the Facebook posts didn’t stop to ask themselves or anyone else if any of this might be true. They hustled the kids into the car when they got home from school — some went to schools to get their kids and told the school authorities why — threw in whatever duffel their car would hold, and headed for the roads out. Within an hour the roads were clogged. Traffic accidents began to slow the exodus.

The news reached the local television and radio stations at about the same time, which was lightning fast. Some producers just put the rumors on the air. Others called the public affairs office at the naval base to get their reaction. They were going to do a story about the rumors anyway, but would be delighted to give someone in uniform fifteen seconds to deny everything.

The public affairs officer, or PAO, at Naval Base Norfolk was Lieutenant Commander Heidi Fritzsche, and she was winding up the day’s business when the first call came in. She listened, incredulous, and asked the television station dude to hold the line.

She rushed down the hallway to the CO’s office and asked the civilian receptionist if Captain Spiers was still there. Informed he was, she rapped on his doorframe once, opened the door and rushed into his office.

“Captain, you aren’t going to believe this, but WNOF just called. They say the news is all over the Internet that the Chinese are going to bomb the base. Their phones are ringing off the hooks. They want a comment from us.”

Captain Spiers’ face went dead white. He had to swallow twice to get enough composure to say, “If they are, they haven’t told us about it.”

“The Internet!” Heidi Fritzsche declared bitterly, and trotted back toward her office and the waiting telephone.

Butler Spiers buried his face in his hands.

Two minutes later, when he felt a bit more composed, he checked his Rolodex, picked up his telephone and called Washington.

Back in her office, Heidi Fritzsche’s phones were ringing constantly. As quickly as her yeomen could field a call on one line, explain about the security exercise and hang up, the phone rang again. Heidi took a call from a man who said he was the manager of a large hotel — he named it — in Virginia Beach. “We’re hosting a convention of Vietnam vets. They’re lined up at the desk ten deep trying to check out. What the hell is going on out there at the base?”

“A routine security exercise.”

“Not according to the Internet.”

“We don’t run the Internet. We’re just trying to run our little corner of the navy.” She hung up and fielded the next call, which was from the PAO at Naval Air Station Oceana.

“Heidi, the phones are ringing off the hook over here. Some of my staff have received e-mails saying that the naval base is preparing for a nuclear attack from the Chinese.”

“For God’s sake!”

“They say it’s Pearl Harbor all over again.”

Involuntarily Heidi looked out her window. Sunlight and shadow were marching across the lawn. The flag flapped vigorously on its pole. Beyond the roof of the next building, she could see superstructures and masts festooned with radars and antennae of ships at the carrier piers. A helicopter went by overhead. Cars and trucks on the streets.

“No one is bombing anything here,” she shouted into the phone. “We’re having a routine security exercise that’s been planned for two months and announced to the public. Read your damn messages! And get a goddamn grip!” She slammed the phone down.

Anastasia Roberts broke the news to Jake Grafton. “We’ve received a call from the Pentagon. They’re fielding inquiries from various networks and newspapers. It seems the Internet is full of messages saying that the Chinese are about to attack the Norfolk naval base. ICBMs are in the air, there are bombs hidden on the base, it’s Pearl Harbor all over again. The stuff has gone viral on Facebook and Twitter and presumably every other Internet site on the planet.”

Jake Grafton just stared at her. So she went on. “The public in the area around the base has panicked. Massive traffic jams of people trying to get the hell out. Cell phone towers are overloaded. People are driving the wrong way on the interstate lanes. Lots of accidents. Some of the hospitals and nursing homes are demanding help to evacuate their patients.”

He made a face.

“The Pentagon has told everyone that the base is having a routine security exercise that’s been planned for months. Maybe some people believe that, but a lot of people don’t.”

I wonder if the watcher will? he thought.

“And Sal Molina is on line one.” Anastasia Roberts wheeled and left the office.

Jake picked up his phone and pushed the button for line one. “Yes, Sal.”

“Have you heard the latest from Norfolk?”

“Yes.”

“The president told the press officer to try to calm the media. He told me to call you and ask, ‘What the fuck, over?’”

Anastasia stuck her head back through the door. She mouthed, “CNO on line two.”

“I have another call, Sal. I’ll get right back to you.”

“Okay.”

Cart McKiernan said, “Norfolk is in meltdown. The news got out, somehow. Maybe not — but rumors are flying thick and fast. They’re on the Internet, and now television and radio. I’m going down there on a chopper from the Pentagon in about an hour. You want to go?”

“Yes. I’ll bring Sal Molina.”

So he called Molina back, cut him short and said, “Admiral McKiernan and I are going to Norfolk. You want to go?”

Molina didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

“See you at the Pentagon helipad in an hour. Bring a toothbrush.”

Jake called Harley Merritt and gave him a quick brief, told his secretary to alert his driver and security team, then went into his office bathroom and threw some things into his overnight bag. When he was in the limo on the way to the Pentagon, he called his wife and told her he wouldn’t be home tonight.

“I’ve been watching television, Jake. Are you going to Norfolk?”

“Yes.”

“Dear God Almighty,” Callie said.

Although she was certainly no Internet junkie and didn’t own a cell phone, Sally Chan heard about the panic in midafternoon from the television set above the bar in her father’s restaurant. The place was unusually empty. She had the place settings on all the tables; her father was cooking in the kitchen; her mother was behind the bar inventorying the liquor, wine and beer. Mrs. Chan had turned on the television for the company.

Sally happened to glance at it, saw the news ribbon scrolling across the bottom and paused to read it. An afternoon soap opera was playing. “U.S. Navy spokesmen at Naval Base Norfolk and in the Pentagon have denied that the security exercise at the base is in any way related to the Internet rumor that a Chinese nuclear weapon is hidden on the naval base.” There was more …

Within sixty seconds the network interrupted the program to air a live interview with the White House press secretary. Sally stepped behind the bar and turned up the volume. He was loose, smiling, as if all this were a big joke. “Debunking Internet rumors will be a new career for me—”

Sally changed channels, got a local station, which was airing footage shot from a helicopter of massive traffic jams on the interstates leading to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and the tunnel under Hampton Roads. She and her mother stood mesmerized watching the camera pan from a height of perhaps five hundred feet.

Cars jammed the roadways as far as the camera could see. A breathless local announcer confirmed that people were fleeing the area as quickly as the roads allowed. Hospitals and nursing homes were demanding transport for patients. Now the camera depicted a demonstration that was almost a riot in front of Norfolk City Hall by a mixed-race crowd. One demonstrator, a fat woman, demanded the authorities transport people from the area who didn’t own cars. “Get some buses,” she shouted into the camera. “Get some city buses and get us out of here! Don’t leave us to die like you did to the poor people during Katrina.” Katrina was the last big hurricane to slam New Orleans.

There was more of the same on other channels.

Bedlam. Mass panic.

Sally turned off the audio of the idiot tube and poured two glasses of wine.

“What does it mean?” Mrs. Chan asked, fingering her glass.

“I don’t know,” Sally answered. She sat on a bar stool to drink hers.

“The Chinese again!” Mrs. Chan said with contempt. “Why do they always blame the Chinese? We are good Americans. We work hard and send our children to college and pay our taxes. We are good Americans, as good as anybody.”

Sally wasn’t listening. She was thinking about Choy Lee, supposedly retired from California high tech, yet he never talked about California or his life or work there. Perhaps there was a failed love affair, but why had he crossed the country to live here, and why did he do nothing? Except fish.

Then there was Zhang Ping, who spoke essentially no English. Why was he here? A pal from California, Choy said. Yet Zhang said little, even to Choy, except to occasionally ask him to pass along a compliment on the excellence of the family’s food. He fished, too.

In the light of the almost unbelievable accusations about diabolical Chinese intentions at the naval base, all these little things became larger, more ominous. Who were Zhang and Choy?

If they weren’t spies, why were they here?

But the whole thing is ridiculous, Sally Chan told herself. A Chinese attack on the Norfolk naval base? That would start World War III. Wouldn’t it?

Torn by indecision, she watched the news. After a bit the local station stopped showing traffic jams and stories about panicked old people at nursing homes and poor people in the ghetto, and showed a photo of five carriers and two amphibious assault ships at the carrier piers during the Christmas holidays two years ago.

So how many carriers were going to be here this Christmas?

According to the television news person, someone had asked that question of the Pentagon, and had been rebuffed. “We never talk about future ship movements,” a man in a blue uniform said on camera.

Sally Chan decided to call Choy Lee. She dialed his cell … and the call didn’t go through. She tried again. Nothing. The fourth time his phone rang. After five rings the call rolled to his voice mail.

“Call me when you can,” she said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice.

The superstory of the day hit the Chinese embassy in Washington like an incoming missile. No one there knew anything about the voyage of Ocean Holiday or the mission of Lieutenant Commander Zhang Ping, both of which were tightly held military secrets.

The staff put out a press release denying the rumors as vicious smears, and reported all this to Beijing in encrypted flash messages. Of course, the Chinese foreign ministry there had their own Internet sources, so they knew all about it.

The answer came back to the Chinese embassy in Washington thirty minutes after it was sent. The ambassador was to announce that he was going to Norfolk to tell everyone that China was being foully smeared by outrageous Internet lies, and to reassure the citizens there. And then he was to go. Immediately.

In the meantime, the embassy press officer was to point out to the American media that an outrageous slander like this one about the Americans would never be allowed on the Internet in China.

While all this was going on, Zhang Ping started his boat toward the mouth of the Elizabeth River. He had to use the channel over the Hampton Roads tunnel. The radar reflectors at each side of the channel showed nicely on his radar screen. As he closed the distance, Choy Lee pointed out the traffic backed up on the access road to the tunnel on Willoughby Spit. Zhang used his binoculars.

He could see that traffic was stopped. Trucks, cars, vans, everything. Flashing lights on police cars. A helicopter — no, two helicopters — hovering near the tunnel entrance.

He passed the binoculars to Choy, who focused, scanned the scene, then handed them back. “An accident in the tunnel,” Choy explained. “This happens often. Last week the cars sat for an hour before a wrecker could get through from the other end to remove the cars.”

Zhang recalled the incident. “Americans have too many cars,” he said dismissively, and turned his binoculars to the amphibious assault ship and her escorting destroyers, which were ahead of him going through the channel over the tunnel. A harbor patrol craft was following the procession. Its machine gun was unmanned. Zhang wondered how long it would take for the crew of the patrol boat to go to action stations and man the weapon, if they were told to do so.

Choy Lee turned on his cell phone. It refused to log on to the cellular network. Another day in America, he thought.