Lee then worked for several smaller companies that were in the forefront of new communication technology. Nokia was a big one. He even worked for Intel, cleaning floors for a year until he got a new job with Apple. With Apple, he became a sales agent for Zedong Electronics.
Until 1998, he had cleaned floors and downloaded plans from computers belonging to directors, designers, and scientists. After 1998, he wore a suit, used his knowledge, and sold several firms on producing everything they needed to be made in China—the whole product from computer chips to cell phones. He was the one who got the contract for everything Apple was about to design to be made by Zedong Electronics in China “I never thought that it was for anything bad,” added Lee, over his second cup of tea.
They glanced at the screen. The Earth was still there, still very dark, and the center of the planet had moved an inch closer to the middle of the screen. If it had been daylight, they would have been able to make out Salt Lake City’s position faintly in the bottom right corner.
“I never thought for a second that something bad was going to come from all our work and selling for Zedong Electronics. The Russians were stealing technology from you. America was blind to it all. America was trying to steal technology from the Japanese and when we came out with the first parts, I’m sure the Japanese then tried to steal it from us. Even a few American spies went over to China. I met a couple of them, and unbeknownst to them, they tried to steal their own technology back!”
“It was nothing new, just a copy of what was stolen, and a cheaper price that nobody could refuse. For years I tried to understand the logic of selling parts at cost or even below cost, but once they started making whole units, the profits must have risen quickly. Zedong Electronics must have lost billions of dollars in the first couple of decades and then got it all back and a lot more by the third decade. It was genius, I thought. The only bank that could have loaned them enough for those two decades would have been the Chinese government—or another country’s government, like Russia or America—nobody else was big enough.”
“Why did you end up here?” asked Carlos. “There’s nothing to steal from here, not from this observatory anyway.”
“I think that after Microsoft, Acer, Intel, Nokia and Apple, and all the information I had gathered, I was relocated to a place that would hide me from the people in Silicon Valley. I think they were scared that employees from those different companies would remember me and put two and two together. I was getting old, my daughter was about to go to university, and my assistance was not necessary any more. I was a liability to them,” Lee replied bluntly.
“You were paid for all this information?” Carlos asked.
“Yes, 1,000 dollars for each contract, and I got paid 63 times in 25 years. Then they told me to come here, they paid for my little house in Salt Lake, purchased our small dry cleaners shop in Holladay for my wife, and told me to sweep floors up here and disappear until they contacted me again.”
“How did they contact you?” was Carlos’ next question.
“Either through a satellite phone we were issued in late 1999, or here by satellite communication.”
“Can you find the satellites they used to contact you from here?” Carlos asked.
“Yes. There were three Chinese satellites that belonged solely to a subsidiary company of Zedong Electronics in Shanghai. All the other Chinese equipment is, or was, controlled by the Chinese government. They must have forgotten that I had enough knowledge to trace their contacts back to the source. I was only contacted here once, then I assume I was forgotten until last week when it was time to terminate me and my family. They often checked to make sure I was cleaning floors here and that I was living in my house, and that my wife and I were happy. The last time I was contacted was a year ago.”
“Where did they contact you from, Shanghai?” Carlos wanted to know.
“No, from their headquarters. It is a large building in Nanjing. I saw the building go up in 1979-80. It took two years to build, was about 30-something stories and the biggest in the area at that time.”
“Who tried to terminate you?” was Carlos’ next question. Lee told him about the four men in the SUV who looked like special soldiers. His friend from Las Vegas had warned him, explaining that he himself was running away from a Chinese hit squad of four men. He had seen this squad of four set fire to his house and a couple of other Chinese families’ houses. Lee explained that a number of families had been killed all over America at the same time, and that it was the work of more than one team of men.
Lee then described the size of the island village north of Shanghai and explained that there could be hundreds of termination, or killer, squads in America, and all the other countries for that matter. Zedong Electronics could have a whole army of them.
*****
General Allen was busy. By lunchtime, he had met with Vice Admiral Martin Rogers in Norfolk. The Navy, he had learned, was in far more disarray than the Air Force. The Navy had zero communications, and the two men went over possible attack scenarios. The general told the admiral that the Air Force was already under wartime conditions with no transponders or lights during flight. General Allen suggested that all naval shipping use the same secrecy because they were definitely being spied on from space.
The meeting was brief, only an hour, but the general left Norfolk for Salt Lake City knowing that the Navy had two old World War II destroyers in operational status and three old diesel-powered submarines used for training that still had usable torpedoes. Martin Rogers had explained that this was what was left of the whole Atlantic Fleet, and that there were about the same number of operational vessels stationed in San Diego—the remains of the Pacific Fleet. He also disclosed that they still had tons of armaments for these rusty buckets on both sides of the country. They had at least a small chance of sinking a couple of ships, if and when necessary.
Captain Sally Powers was flying the general to Salt Lake City. They arrived an hour after Carlos had left, had a late lunch with the base commander, and took Lady Dandy’s crew with him in the C-130 over to Edwards Air Force base. They all arrived in California around 4:00 in the afternoon. Maggie and the kids were happy to see Will and decided to stay with him until they were needed elsewhere. Will Smart was still not happy about flying across country.
The general met with the Edwards base commander while the troops lifted the fourth generator from Preston out of the belly of the aircraft, after which he took off for the return flight with Buck and Barbara still aboard, back to Hill AFB in Salt Lake City.
It would be dark by the time they landed and Sally would get a rest while another pilot flew them back to Andrews. On the way, General Allen told Buck about the developing Air Force they now had. Edwards AFB would have their own C-130 ready in a day or two. There was the F-4 Falcon at Edwards, two pilots would fly her over to Hill AFB tomorrow, once she was ready for flight. Two more Hueys in the museum could be operational within a week, and now that they would have electricity in a few hours, they could work 24/7 on the aircraft. He told Buck about the two flyable F-4s already at Hill and his loan of an HC-130—a Hercules fuel tanker used in Vietnam that he called Mother Goose—to Preston in North Carolina. She would be ready at Hill AFB in the morning and could get into Preston’s airstrip half loaded with fuel. It could refuel his airfield tanks daily and since it had pre-1980 pumps, it could suck fuel out of anything—even a commercial airport system or a tractor-trailer.