The Einstein Papers

CHAPTER 9

Martinez wiggled around in the chair to find a comfortable position. The oak armchairs in the Archives Department of the FBI were about as soft as a boulder. The light was dim in the reading room, but at the far end of the twenty-foot-long, thirty-year-old conference table, Martinez could see that the agent assigned to watch him as he searched the files was nodding off.

Martinez was reading the field reports from the FBI agents that followed Einstein. He was trying to determine why China kidnapped Choi, a student applying for asylum who was an expert in obscure Einsteinian physics. The reports spanned ten years, from 1945, when Hoover had first ordered the surveillance, to 1955, when Einstein passed away in a hospital in New Jersey.

The reports contained little of interest. One event, a report of Einstein shaking off his followers in the summer of 1945, shortly after the surveillance began, was interesting. The only other report Martinez found useful was a report of an intercepted telegram destined for physicist Niels Bohr, while Einstein was dying. The surveillance in between those two events seemed to be as worthless as a bowling ball without holes. Martinez slid the aging oak chair back from the table, creating a clatter in the silent room. "I'll need copies of these two reports," he said to the agent, who had awakened with a start. He handed the agent a sheet of paper with the file numbers written in pencil.

"It usually takes about thirty to forty-five minutes," said the agent, stifling a yawn. Martinez handed the agent a card that contained only telephone numbers. He circled the correct one with his pencil. "Could you have your people fax the reports to my office? I'm running on a tight schedule."

"Sounds fair," the agent noted, taking the card from Martinez.

"Thanks for your help," Martinez said as he strode from the room. Black leather helmet and fake Fu Manchu mustache masking his features, Taft nudged the shifter with his toe into fourth gear, then twisted the throttle wide open. The black Chinese-made motorcycle sped up, a staccato popping coming from the exhaust pipe. A cloud of dust trailed behind as Taft drove down the dirt road. To his right, Choi sat in the sidecar, head lolling from side to side. He was still in a deep stupor and, with luck, would remain so for some time.

The night was clear and cool. The dim yellow beam from the cycle's headlight shared illumination duties with the full harvest moon. Taft glanced down at the odometer. Three hundred miles to go. At the current rate of speed they would cross the border around four in the morning. He leaned to one side to bank the motorcycle around a curve. Two hours later, and 222 miles north-northeast of Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, a chill wind carrying the cold of a thousand northern nights swept through the open rear cargo door of a U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules sitting on a dirt field one mile from the Chinese border. A pool of light from inside the plane puddled on the ground outside. Blowing across the steaming cup of coffee, the pilot of the C-130, Dewey Brable, took a sip of the hot liquid, then set it on the rear ramp and lit a Marlboro cigarette.

"Feels strange to be inside the Soviet Union," Brable said to Taft's boss, Retired General Earl Benson, who stood smoking a cigar alongside the ramp.

Benson chose not to answer. Instead he shouted into the plane to the radio operator,

"What's their location now?"

Checking his direction-finding set mounted alongside the radar, the air force lieutenant measured the distance with calipers and shouted back, "Under two hundred miles, sir."

"Good," Benson said.

"How did we receive permission to land here?" Brable asked Benson.

"The Commonwealth of Independent States is our ally now," Benson said.

"Any chance of you telling me what agency you work for?"

"No chance in hell," Benson said, smiling. "Now, where did you get that coffee?" Jumping from the helicopter while its main rotor was still turning, Jimn raced into the security building in Lanzhou. Walking quickly down the hall toward the interrogation room, his polished black boots tapped out a muted staccato. He stopped at the door to the room containing Deng Biao. Motioning to the guard to move, Jimn opened the door. It took him only a second to make the identification. He stared at Biao, then the interrogator, before speaking in a cold voice. "This had better not be the person you think is Choi."

Twitching with fear, the interrogator said in a rush, "I was not the one to make the identification. I'm only handling the questioning."

"And what did you find out?" Jimn asked.

"He claims to be an archaeologist."

"He may be — because he sure as hell isn't Choi, you stupid ass," Jimn screamed. He walked to a nearby cell and looked at Leeds. "Where were you night before last?"

"I was having dinner with the mayor of the town of Xining. You can call him and verify this," Leeds finished.

"Where did you purchase your boots?"

"I bought them in Hong Kong. The British army swears by them." Storming from the room Jimn ran to a telephone to check with the mayor of Xining. When Leeds's story checked out, Jimn telephoned the prime minister. Twelve minutes later two Chinese fighter jets blasted from the runway at the Lop Nur Nuclear Weapons Testing Center and streaked toward Urumqi. At the same instant, refueled and parked in front of the Advanced Weapons Facility, Yibo was unbuckling himself from the passenger seat of the helicopter when the call came through from Jimn.

"We've been had," Jimn said. "Fly west to Urumqi like we'd planned." The pilot and Yibo immediately lifted off from the base in Qinghai and flew west. In the confusion that had been generated, the Chinese troops dispatched to search the train in Urumqi were ordered to stand down and return to their barracks. The cargo train Taft and Choi had ridden was already in Urumqi and being unloaded. To search the train for Choi would be pointless — it was, by now, almost empty.

"A transport plane is arriving," Jimn informed the ground commander. "Load the troops aboard."

Flown west to a landing strip near Yining, they were divided into search teams to patrol the border with Kazakhstan.

The Chinese prime minister, angered he had been fooled, ordered two converted cargo planes that were equipped with sophisticated sensors detecting both heat and movement, to fly from their base near Chengdu. With in-air refueling, they could be over the ChinaKazakhstan border in two hours. The instruments on board were capable of detecting and cataloguing the presence of life down to the size of a turtle. If the troops somehow missed Choi, the sensors wouldn't.

The net around Taft and Choi was finally being pulled tight.

"I'm picking up a couple of fast movers in the area," the air force radar operator aboard the C-130 said as he adjusted the radar definition. "Twin MIG-29 knock-offs. In addition I have two Chinese cargo planes on a course for the border. They're two hundred miles out," the radar operator said as the blips on his screen became more defined, "and it looks like a lone helicopter as well."

"They've seen through the diversion in Lanzhou. They're on to them," Benson noted.

"General, I'm receiving a secure transmission," the radio operator shouted from the rear of the plane. Benson walked forward and received the slip of folded paper. Overheads reveal twin Chinese prop planes inbound from Chengdu, ETA two hours maximum. Intelligence suggests they are bloodhounds.

Our satellites have recorded the bloodhounds leaving their base, Benson thought to himself. God help Taft now. Feeding the strip of paper into a shredder, he stood quietly for a moment.

One hour and thirty minutes later, the jet carrying Jimn from Lanzhou touched down at the deserted airport in Yining. A single jeep sat on the runway, awaiting his arrival. Jimn bolted down the ramp from the jet and climbed into the passenger seat.

"What is the status of the search?" he said to the driver without preamble.

"The troops are in position at the border as you ordered. The fighter jets ordered to watch overhead have reported nothing as yet. Sensor-equipped planes are due within thirty minutes," the driver, a captain in the Chinese army, said as he put the jeep in gear and drove away from the jet.

"Take me to the border," Jimn said.

"Right away, sir," the captain said as he shifted through the gears. Twenty miles from the Chinese border with Kazakhstan, Taft switched off the motorcycle's headlight at the sound of a helicopter passing overhead. Pulling to the side of the road, he waited until the sound of the rotor blades faded in the distance. He was just about to pull back onto the road when a pair of jets roared close overhead.

"When it rains it pours," Taft muttered as the jets flew past. Checking his map by the light of the moon, he measured the distance to the dry creek bed where he would turn off the road. Less than two miles. Slamming the motorcycle in gear he twisted the throttle and pulled back onto the road.

"In light of what has happened, there's no way I would feel comfortable continuing the dig," Leeds said to Biao outside the police station where the men had just been released.

"I understand how you feel," Biao said quietly.

"I have radioed the Xining site. They will ship my luggage. I'm leaving immediately for Hong Kong, where I'll catch a flight home," Leeds said quickly as he stood by the cab that would take him to the airport.

"I apologize for the trouble." Biao said. "I only hope your university will not completely pull out of this project.

Leeds shrugged — he could care less.

Jimn shouted orders into his hand-held radio as the jeep bumped along the border. Brush and trees grew thickly on the Russian side, obscuring the view. Chain-link fencing, erected by China in years past, ran from the border crossing outside Yining one mile to the north and south. With the current tension between China and the former Soviet Union, the checkpoint crossing was closed up. The road was covered with concrete barricades. On the Chinese side of the border the land was open. The brush and trees were burned off every odd-numbered year to stem the rising tide of smuggling.

"Chang, do you read me?" Jimn said into the radio.

After a pause of almost a minute, Yibo answered. "This is Yibo."

"Watch the fence line closely from the air. I will start driving south."

"Very good, sir," Yibo said. He ordered his pilot to began sweeping back and forth high above the fence.

On orders from their commanding officer, the Chinese troops that had been assembled formed a human wall and began to walk from the fence line east through the burned-out wasteland. They carefully searched the ground for tracks. High overhead, the jets could see little as they passed at two hundred miles an hour. The sensor-equipped planes were still miles away. They would arrive moments too late to help.

Taft stopped the motorcycle and hastily covered it with brush. He walked a short distance away into the woods. Using a pair of infrared binoculars he stared silently at the line of troops to the south of the fence line. His planned crossing point was thick with Chinese troops. Hoisting Choi over his shoulder like a sack of cement, Taft crept close to the border. He would have to alter his plan.

Keying his tiny portable radio unit he gave the signal.

"Three beeps on 750 megahertz, General," the air force radar operator shouted from the cockpit of the C-130.

"Give me an update," Benson said to the radar operator.

"Two cargo jets, one hundred miles out. Two fighters are still loitering above the scene. The helicopter is upwind, near the fenced portion of the crossing. It seems to be patrolling the fence line."

"What's on the radio?" Benson asked.

An air force radio operator, specially selected for this mission because he was fluent in Mandarin answered. "The Chinese troops have been ordered to patrol around the scheduled crossing point."

"How far is our man's signal from the border?"

"Less than five hundred yards," the radar operator answered, his eyes fixed on the flashing light on his display screen.

"Come on, John," Benson said quietly, "you've almost made it." Creeping to the edge of the burned area, Taft could see the open space to the border was nearly eighty yards wide. He could only hope that the Chinese had burned the line inside their border and not yards inside Kazakhstan. If he could cross the open area and make it into the woods, he believed he would be inside Kazakhstan. The tree line was the key to living. He had to believe that — it was all that kept him going.

"The ground troops have just located a motorcycle," Yibo shouted to the pilot of the helicopter. "Fly south about a mile, I wish to check it out." At the news of the motorcycle, Jimn also ordered his driver to race south. Screaming into his portable radio, he ordered the troops to locate the trail of footprints and follow them. It was time to bring this to an end. Choi was too valuable to lose. Taft looked through his night-vision binoculars at the mass of humanity clustered around the motorcycle that had brought the pair to the border. Beams from the soldiers'

flashlights intersected as the troops massed, each trying to get a peek at the cycle. Then, as Taft watched, the beams of light took order and began to march directly toward where he was hiding. Taft had removed his boots; with Choi on his back there was only a single set of prints. It seemed his brilliant plan had fooled no one.

"There's only one thing to do," Taft said to himself as he clutched Choi tighter. With his plans in ruins, his only prayer was to sprint across the open space. He hoped he could outrun his pursuers. There was no other option. He began to run to the border as fast as his legs would move. The sound of a whistle reached Tafts ears around the same time a weak beam of light from a flashlight swept past his pounding feet. The soldier who had spotted Taft screamed into the radio to alert the others as he started running after the fleeing pair.

Punching their afterburners in response to the radio call from the soldier, the two Chinese fighters did a 180-degree turn and began to fly south. Yibo's helicopter was above the motorcycle, about to touch down, when he heard the soldier's call. The pilot turned toward the troops chasing Taft without an order being given. Hyperventilating to fill his lungs with air, his legs aching dully, Taft made a dead run across the open expanse. The weight of Choi seemed nonexistent as a rampant explosion of adrenaline coursed through his blood. Sixty yards across the open space, he began up the slope of die hill that formed the border. Taft's bare feet were pounding the ground with the intensity of a jackhammer in a paint shaker. Nose flared, he screamed a rebel yell.

A Kentucky thoroughbred would have had a hard time keeping pace. Jimn shouted into the radio. "Fighters, spray the border with your chain guns."

"What if they cross the border?" one of the pilots immediately asked over the radio as he removed the firing lock from the wing mini-cannon.

"They cannot leave the country alive," Jimn said loudly. "Keep firing until you bring them down."

Fifty yards behind Taft the Chinese troops started up the hill. If they had only stopped and taken a shot with their rifles they would have hit him cleanly in the back. Instead, caught up in the heat of the chase, they ran blindly, their rifles held low.

"Go in at an altitude of ten feet," Yibo shouted to the helicopter pilot. Dropping down, the helicopter flew just above the troops' heads. The helicopters powerful spotlight illuminated Taft and Choi just as they crested the hill, jumped over the top, and raced into the woods inside Kazakhstan.

"I've got you now," Yibo said quietly.

Streaking low from the north, the two fighters lined up for their firing run. The lead pilot was seconds from squeezing his trigger and tearing Taft and Choi to shreds when his cockpit was lit up with the blinding light of a phosphorescent rocket. Twisting his control stick, the lead fighter pilot broke off his approach. As trained, the second fighter followed his partner. Both fighters executed a ninety-degree turn to the east. Seconds after Taft entered the forest that signaled the Kazakhstan border, he was tackled by a man dressed entirely in black. Taft reared his arm back to punch.

"Stop, we're the good guys," the man shouted with a Georgia drawl. Taft quickly lowered his arm.

Choi was plucked from where he had been dropped by a second man, just as the helicopter carrying Yibo crossed the border, searchlight sweeping like a death ray. The next few seconds seemed to last forever. Dust and leaves swirled about as a loud whining noise filled the forest. Crouching and placing his hands over his ears, Taft buried his eyes in his shirt.

Like the phoenix rising from the dead, a United States Marine Harrier jump jet hidden behind the hill rose directly into the path of the advancing helicopter. Massive spotlights on the Harrier's wingtips lit night into day, while a second set of white-hot phosphorescent flares belched from the forward pods. A voice from both the plane's radio and an external loudspeaker overrode the noise of the whining engines. The amplified voice said in Chinese, "Turn now or you will be destroyed." Eyes blinded by the spotlights and the flares, Yibo's pilot jammed his cyclic to the side. The helicopter turned back from the border and hovered. The troops racing up the hill paused, unsure if they should advance.

The loudspeaker continued. "This is Captain Don Chin, United States Marine Corps. We are on joint exercises with the Republic of Kazakhstan. Any violation of the Republic's sovereign border will be met with force. Retreat immediately and maintain a minimum distance of one mile from the border."

At that instant Taft was grabbed by the shoulder.

"Now," the man dressed in black shouted.

Crashing through the forest, the four men reached an armored Humvee a short distance away. Taft and Choi were pushed in the backseat. The soldiers dressed in black climbed in front. The driver turned the key and without a moment's hesitation the Humvee raced away, heading west from the border. In less than twenty seconds, the Humvee was doing sixty miles an hour on the narrow dirt road.

The man in the passenger seat turned and spoke to Taft. "It'll take us several minutes to reach the plane. Do you need some water or something?"

"I've got some coffee in a thermos," the driver added. Taft rubbed his palms across his face. "Force Recon?" he asked.

"How did you guess?" the man in the passenger seat asked.

"No one else would be crazy enough to attempt a stunt like that. You're the only guys in the military that want to die for your country."

"Semper fi," the driver laughed.

"I'll take that coffee," Taft said wearily, "plus a cigarette if you have one." As the Humvee slid around a curve, narrowly missing a grove of trees, the marine in the passenger seat handed back the thermos, a pack of Camels, and a Zippo lighter.

"Kind of hard to believe," Taft said.

"What's that?'

"I quit smoking seven years ago," he said as he lit the Camel and took a drag.

"The shit is really hitting the fan, sir," the radio operator aboard the C-130 said as he continued monitoring the radio transmissions. "The ground commander, an officer named Jimn, is calling to Beijing to receive permission to cross the border," he said, rapidly translating the radio messages.

"Order the Harrier to back away slowly," Benson told the radio operator. "Keep a close eye on the radarscope," Benson said to the radar man. "If the fighters cross the border, alert me immediately."

"Force Recon reports they have both parties. They say they can see the lights of the C130 now and estimate their arrival time at about four minutes," the radio operator yelled to Benson.

"Warm your engines," Benson said to Brable, who was already in the pilot's seat, waiting for instructions.

"Roger," Brable said as he reached to the overhead panel and flicked the switch to spin the starters.

In a matter of seconds smoke was pouring from the four turboprop engines. They quickly warmed to operating temperature. Brable waited for further orders.

"Is the Harrier away from the border?" Benson asked.

"He's backing up. The pilot estimates he's about two miles west of the border and as yet unchallenged."

"Where's the Humvee?"

"Less than one mile away and closing fast."

"Order the Harrier to turn and retreat at full speed," Benson ordered. The radio operator shouted the order into the radio. The Marine Harrier turned and began to pick up speed; seconds later it shot past the C-130.

"Here they come!" one of the C-130's riggers screamed from the rear door.

"Start down the runway," Benson shouted to Brable, who immediately advanced the throttles. "Radio the Humvee we're moving; order them to run up the ramp as we taxi," Benson said to the radio operator.

"You're gonna love this," the driver shouted to Taft as soon as the message came over his radio earpiece.

Taft tossed the Camel butt out the window and took a last swig from the cup of coffee.

"What now?" he asked.

"We've been ordered to drive up the ramp of the plane while it's taxiing down the runway."

"You guys ever try that before?" Taft asked.

"No, but I saw it in a movie once," the driver said as he floored the throttle and raced after the retreating C-130.

The tension was as thick as mud in the cockpit of the Air Force Hercules as it taxied toward takeoff. Benson wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

"Jimn just received permission to cross the border. Beijing has ordered him to capture the escapees and return them for trial no matter what it takes," the radio operator shouted to Benson.

"Let's hope our backup plan works," Benson said quietly. The Humvee lined up behind the rear ramp of the retreating C-130. With a burst of speed the truck shot up the ramp. Tires slipping on the C-130's metal floor, the Humvee screeched to a halt inches from the bulkhead to the cockpit. Taft waved at Benson through his open window.

"Ramp up. Take off," Benson screamed to Brable.

Its throttles pushed to full, the C-130 sped faster down the runway. Brable watched his airspeed, then pulled back on the yoke and climbed into the air. He steered the plane west, away from the border with China.

"I've got a flight of seven jets as yet unidentified. They're in a classic delta wing pattern approaching from the front at a very high rate of speed," the radar operator of the C-130 shouted.

"Our baby-sitters have arrived," said Benson. He began walking back to the cargo area.

"Son of a bitch!" Brable shouted from the pilot's seat as a flight of Russian Mig-31E

fighters raced past them heading east toward the border.

Within minutes after the Russian Migs appeared on the Chinese fighter's radarscopes the prime minister quickly changed his mind about a cross-border excursion. Chinese air and ground forces were ordered to immediately retreat from the border.

"I need a heading, sir," the navigator shouted back to Benson.

"First to Volgograd to refuel. Then we're going home," Benson yelled forward. Leaning against the door of the Humvee, Benson smiled. "So, John, how was your trip?"

"So-so," Taft said quietly.

"As usual you did an excellent job," Benson said to Taft.

"That's why I get the big money," Taft said, turning his attention to Choi, now struggling to wake up. "Where's the doctor on this plane? I made him a promise we'd fix his shoulder."