The Einstein Papers

CHAPTER 2

Below ground in the northeast corner of the basement of the sprawling Commerce Department Building located between Fourteenth and Fifteenth streets in Washington, D.C., Burt Lipshiski dipped a corn chip into a crock pot filled with melted Velveeta cheese and salsa. The building was completely deserted. The only sounds came from a small black-and-white television and the shouts of lipshiski and his partner, Carl Lincoln, as the game unfolded.

"As long as you're getting up, make me a dog," Lincoln said.

"Chili and cheese and onion?" Lipshiski asked.

"Whoa!" Lincoln said before answering his partner. Those damn Broncos are going to pull this off. Yeah," he said finally, "the works."

It was in that instant, while Lincoln and Lipshiski were busy eating hot dogs and watching the Super Bowl, that the intruder slipped past their office. Working quickly, he overrode the security system protecting the laboratory at the far end of the hall. The intruder, one of the members of an elite Chinese intelligence apparatus tasked with stealing Western technology, had planned for his entry and escape carefully. Since early 1997, when the Chinese first learned of the laboratory, until now, Super Bowl Sunday 1998, the agent had prepared his action carefully. He selected the date with purpose — believing Americans to be both dumb and lazy, he felt sure the Commerce Building would be only lightly guarded during the game. The agent hated Americans, finding them unmotivated and concerned only with the most petty of details. He had lived in Washington, D.C., for almost a year now, posing as an employee of the Chinese Embassy, and he had seen little to change his opinion. He had grown up in a thatch-roofed shack with pigs living in a pen next door, and now he discovered that for most Americans an automobile without air conditioning was an unbearable hardship. The agent had also found that the average American citizen cared little for the politics of the world. Americans seemed content if they were able to pay their bills, own a home, watch cable television, and screw their spouses on weekends.

The agent believed America's role as leader of the world would soon be ending. It seemed fitting the burglary was planned for the most American of days, Super Bowl Sunday. Slipping into the laboratory during the first quarter, he copied what he needed from the computers, then rifled through desks for the next two quarters before slipping out in the middle of the fourth.

He waited in his car on the street outside, listening to the end of the game on his radio. A pair of bumper stickers sat on the seat next to him. As soon as he confirmed that the team called the Broncos had won, he got out and slapped the winners bumper sticker onto the rear of his car.

Once that was done, he drove into traffic, madly honking his horn, as if the Bronco's winning the game was the greatest event of his life. The horn honked until he was but a block away from the embassy.

It was the perfect touch to end a successful operation.