The doctor’s voice faded from Hal’s mind as he strained to recollect other memories of the handrail or the building he was hanging from. Nothing came back. The event was an empty vault in his mind. He wasn’t even sure if it was memory or imagination. The doctor’s voice faded back into his consciousness. Then Henry appeared at the door.
“Hank— What’a’you doing here?”
“Your friend will be fine,” the doctor said on his way out of the room. “We’re releasing him tomorrow.”
Henry gave Hal a heavy box smothered in crinkled wrapping paper. Hal scoffed at it. “I’m here one night— thank you though.” He leaned to set the gift on a nightstand and Hank’s voice stopped him.
“Hey— open that! You can’t have one, but it won’t stop me!”
Hal tore open a wrapped six-pack of Monk’s Wit. A craft beer brewed by monks at an abbey in northern New Mexico. Hank tugged a bottle out before the wrapping paper hit the floor. He cracked it open, took a seat and had a drink. “What they got you in here for?”
“I don’t know. They tell me I passed out.”
“Is this related to all that stuff you were telling me about?”
Hal looked around his room and out in the hall.
“I think so. This isn’t the best place to talk about it though.”
Henry looked around. Trying to see whatever Hal was looking at. “You think you’re being watched?”
“Sounds crazy, I know. But it’s even more than being watched.”
Yuen Weng had never been to the Summer Palace of the Chinese President. His palms were sweaty, and the plush red velvet chair he sat on felt like a down sleeping bag. His heavily-starched formal officer’s uniform didn’t make him any more comfortable. He went over the notes of his presentation in his mind. Too preoccupied to take in the opulent décor of the ante room that featured shelves of Ming vases and ornate carvings in the walls.
Two disciplined guards in formal attire stared straight forward — guarding the double-door entrance to the Standing Committee Chamber. Weng dabbed the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief as they pulled the doors wide open. An attendant stepped out and invited Weng inside.
The chamber was a formal, plush conference room. The walls and ceiling all hand-carved into twisting dragons and fierce warriors. The solid dark table had ten wide chairs around it with President Li Weilen’s in the center — directly below the seal of China. It featured five solid-gold stars emblazoned on a red background and hovering above the entrance to the Forbidden City. The officials seated around the president were members of the Politburo Standing Committee — the equivalent of the American President’s cabinet.
Weng’s escort seated him beside his superior officer, Wuhan Goan. Goan was rotund and clean cut. His official title: Minister of State Security. The attendant introduced Weng to the Standing Committee — starting with the President. Continuing around the table, providing names and titles of the other members.
The attendant then excused himself. All eyes were on the President, who nodded his approval for Weng to proceed. Weng stood, cleared his throat, and addressed the committee. “President Weilen, members of the committee… Upon a thorough investigation by the office of the Ministry of State Security, I am here to report that the fire in the Fuzhou Railway Communications Bureau Building was the result of a premeditated and sophisticated attack by a foreign state.”
Weng continued, speaking directly to the president. “As you know, the MSS has been observing the recent conflict in Afghanistan and has observed the activity of a stealth assassin or team of assassins, which our department has code-named the Phantom. I submit to you that the saboteur, the arsonist of the railway building and this Phantom-assassin are one and the same.”
Weng glanced high up the wall to a small window and gave a nod. The projectionist inside dimmed the conference room lights. A video projected onto a screen on the opposite wall of the chamber. It was a freeze-frame of surveillance footage. A bright orange ring encircled a dark object. “This is a close up of the building’s roof moments before the fire started. The circled area is an incendiary device that caused the fire. Its outer shell is magnesium — made to burn without a trace while igniting the inner core of thermite — the incendiary material. Our explosives experts have confirmed with a high degree of certainty that the thermite comes from an HJZ incendiary grenade produced by the Army of Taiwan. However, I believe this is only what the saboteur wants us to think.”
Weng continued, briefly giving a nod to the projectionist to play the next clip. “Now as the projectionist slowly rewinds the video, watch the black box, the incendiary device.” The committee stared with intent as the box vanished.
“Where did it go?” One committee member whispered to another.
“Now, we’ll play the video forward in real time.” The box magically appeared again, erupting in a shower of sparks, eventually melting through the roof. Weng proceeded to show them an edited version of the mysterious handrail — jostling before and after the eruption. An animated outline of a figure was added to demonstrate how a person’s weight pulled the handrail down, causing it to break free. “The perpetrator seems to have survived this unexpected event and we presume he climbed down the building. However, no surveillance footage of this side of the building exists to confirm this.”
Weng paused. Addressing the President again. “We are unaware of the stealth technology the Phantom is employing. But we do know the delivery method by observing operations in Afghanistan.”
Video footage played from an infrared sensor on a Chinese spy satellite. “The missions happen at night. He is flown in by a supersonic stealth aircraft. We know this because of the heat signature. It’s very small, but consistent with heat signatures of American B-2 and B-21 stealth bombers. Here, you can see a lone parachute deploy. This is the figure of the jumper. Whatever optical camouflage device he’s wearing seems to trigger after landing. It also shields his body temperature from infrared view. We lost the parachuting man in Afghanistan after landing and his suit rendered him invisible. However, we were able to track the signature of the supersonic aircraft that delivered him, going backward through recorded satellite imagery. We were only able to track it for about an hour, but it was enough time to calculate its airspeed and possible trajectory. When we compare that airspeed information with the satellite data of the Fuzhou attack, we can extrapolate times that the aircraft took off from various American air bases around the world. This was the only possible match…”
A new video played from a satellite feed of the Aurora taking off. “The stealth aircraft code-named Aurora, taking off from Holloman Air Force Base. In the Southwestern desert of the United States, in the state of New Mexico.”
Weng turned toward the projectionist, motioning to turn the room lights on. “With the permission of the President, this committee and the office of the Ministry of State Security, I would like to lead a covert team to observe the base and investigate this matter further.”
Grumblings sounded among the committee. High-pitched feedback interrupted as a microphone slid across the desk. Dalian Teda, the Minister of Public Security, pulled it toward himself. Weng thought it was odd to have a microphone in such a small setting. His eyes followed the cable to a recorder on a stand in the in the corner of the room. “If I may, I’d like to ask you about some inconsistencies in your report.”
“Of course, sir.” Weng replied.
“The first being this notion of a phantom assassin. You described one possible theory, but there is also a prevailing theory that there is no such “Phantom” at work in the conflict in Afghanistan. It is a rumor started by the CIA as a psychological warfare tactic designed to terrify their enemy into submission. The CIA has found great success with these tactics in the past, including frightening communists in the Philippines with tales of a mythical blood-thirsty creature called Asuang. The second inconsistency — even if there is a Phantom or a stealth assassin as you say, how can you ascertain what country it represents? There are no distinguishing marks on the aircraft. It’s not very compelling evidence to allege an act of war by the United States. For this severe of an accusation, we need irrefutable evidence that the United States did indeed commit an act of war.”