The Secret Cardinal

5

Kilkenny carefully studied the holographic image of a building that looked like a long, nearly windowless block of concrete. The solitary wing of Chifeng Prison was part of a complex of buildings that housed a large population of inmates. These buildings comprised only a third of the structures on the prison grounds. The brickyard, where inmates were reformed through hellish hard labor, accounted for the remainder.

‘Display at two-hundred-meter radius,’ Kilkenny said.

The computer controlling the imaging chamber responded to Kilkenny’s voice and zoomed out to bring the rest of the penal facility and some of the surrounding countryside into view. The prison stood in the grasslands just north of the city whose name it shared. Also known as the Xinsheng Brickyard, the laogai’s kilns produced most of the masonry used by the nearby city of a half million people.

The model, which appeared atop an imaging table six feet in diameter, revealed elements of Chifeng Prison at an extraordinarily fine level of detail. From local topography and roads to door swings and light switches — anything that could be gleaned from architectural drawings, satellite images, and even the recollections of released prisoners had been painstakingly assembled into a computer-generated simulation. Kilkenny could view the prison at day or night, study the patterns of guard patrols and deliveries, even watch stacks of bricks grow in time-lapse fashion, only to disappear into railcars every Thursday.

After combing through the information gathered by Donoher’s people in China, Kilkenny found he lacked only two things: the location of Yin’s cell and a recent photograph of the man. Of the two images he had of Yin, one was a photograph taken in the early 1950s when Yin was a young man, and the other was a very grainy image culled from the Beijing video clip.

Kilkenny stood braced against the hologram table, the palms of his hands pressed onto the thick black ring of rubber-coated steel that encircled the base of the imaging chamber, puzzling over how to safely breach the laogai’s security. At a nearby console of multi-screened Mac Pro computers sat Bill Grinelli, Kilkenny’s friend and MARC’s resident computer guru. Grin held a frothy cappuccino in one hand while the other danced across a keyboard, working his technological wizardry.

A keen intellect and a mischievous sense of humor had earned Grin his nickname, and he wore the appellation as a badge of honor. A few years Kilkenny’s senior, Grin still viewed life with the youthful enthusiasm of a college freshman. What remained of his receding hair dangled from the back of his head in a brown-gray pony-tail. The goatee that encircled his trademark smile grew down from his chin into an often-stroked point. On his forearm, Grin sported a tattoo of an impish elf seated on a crescent moon scattering pixie dust.

Kilkenny had little trouble enlisting his friend’s aid in the effort to liberate Yin Daoming. Just one viewing of the Beijing video had put Grin on the next flight to Rome. He admitted a twinge of envy over Kilkenny’s private audience with the Pope, despite the fact that his personal religious stance lay somewhere between lapsed Catholic and agnostic. The pair divided the work between them, with Kilkenny tackling operational planning while Grin dealt with technical issues.

Grin’s only disappointment with the new project came when he discovered that Vatican Intelligence did not occupy space in any of the historic structures owned by the tiny nation. But what it lacked in dramatic views and Renaissance grandeur was more than balanced by the quality and dedication of its analysts and the tools the Vatican provided for them to do their job. The underground facility, located beneath the building that housed the Vatican Mosaic Studio and known as the catacombs by those who labored there, was both stylish and modern, and Kilkenny and Grin had the necessary space and equipment to do their work.

‘So, how are you coming?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘I’ve tickled the laogai’s computer network as well as its link to the mother ship in Beijing, so I’m pretty sure we can keep them out of the loop when your team goes in. And if Donoher can provide me with a few people who speak Chinese like natives, I’m pretty sure I can wreak six kinds of havoc with their emergency responders. You asked for a smoke screen, and I think I can deliver.’

‘Well, at least one of us is making some progress.’

‘Still banging your head against the wall?’ Grin asked.

‘With lumps to prove it. There are really only two ways to do this: Hard or soft. Going in hard means guns blazing and a lot of people ending up dead. And to take on a place this size and successfully pull off a snatch-and-grab, I basically need to turn a couple platoons of Chinese volunteers into commandos. On top of that are the twin problems of quietly moving that many armed men into position and then getting them out with Yin after all hell breaks loose.’

‘How do you think the Pope would feel about killing in order to get Yin out of jail?’

‘His stance on war has been very consistent,’ Kilkenny replied, ‘so I’m pretty sure he’d veto any plan that includes the words acceptable enemy losses’

‘Got any soft ideas?’

‘I’m still toying with their regular delivery cycle, but part of the problem is that it is regular. Same guy drives up in the same truck at the same time every week. He knows the guards, and they know him.’

‘So if anything changes, the guards’ Spidey-senses start a-tingling.’

‘Soft is clearly the way to tackle this beast, but finding a vulnerability that we can exploit…’ Kilkenny’s voice trailed off as he stared at the long prairie grasses surrounding the laogai. ‘If I can just figure out how to get Yin five hundred yards outside the perimeter, the odds of getting him all the way out jump to sixty percent. And they increase with every additional mile the team covers after that.’

‘If regular deliveries are a problem, what about irregular deliveries?’ Grin asked. ‘They know the guy who makes the rice and gruel run, and the guy who picks up the bricks, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How about prisoners?’

‘Those are scheduled as well,’ Kilkenny said.

‘Most, but not all. According to the records, Yin’s last road trip wasn’t scheduled.’

Kilkenny had read the report and realized that Grin was right. Yin’s trip to Beijing and back was a unique event and not a normal prisoner transfer. Suddenly Kilkenny found himself pondering how to manufacture an event that would allow movement in and out of the prison without arousing suspicion.

‘Did you ever see Troy?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘The movie, or the suburb of Detroit?’ Grin asked with a straight face.

‘The movie,’ Kilkenny replied, ignoring the bait.

‘The book was better, but I read it in the original Greek,’ Grin remarked without a hint of braggadocio.

‘The Trojans accepted the horse from the Achaeans because they believed it was a peace offering. We have to give the folks running that prison something they will accept, no questions asked. That’s the only way this can work.’