And far away, in distant San Diego, three separate checks, each one for $10,000, were being deposited in three separate bank accounts, owned by Zhao, Gao, and young Dong, three Chinese nationals preparing for a new life in the USA, a country none of them had ever even visited.
Quinlei Dong rowed to the shore, leaving the old boat surrounded by reeds, moored to an iron bar he had hammered into the muddy shallows long ago. From here to the road was almost a mile, but the grasses were tall and Dong wore high gumboots as he squelched his way forward, carrying the box, splashing his way back to his car.
It took him 25 minutes in the pitch dark, and then he stood in a clear stream that ran under the road, cleaning off his boots. He put them in the trunk with the box of fruit, reversed the car out of the woods and hit the main road into Canton. It was almost 10:00 P.M. and he looked forward to a late dinner at his small home in the market area, right off the Liuersan Road, by the Shamian Island bridge.
He and his wife, Lin, had lived there for 15 years, since they left college in Beijing. Both of them had been in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and they had seen several friends and one cousin shot down and killed by the military. As such they had elected to get out of the capital and move to the quieter, warmer city of Canton. And there they had nursed their grievances against the ruling Communist party, vowing one day to leave China for the United States, as so many of their friends had done over the years.
Young Quinlei had been recruited by the CIA before he left the university, during the six months following the massacre in the square. And in the ensuing 17 years he had built up a nest egg of almost $450,000 in his bank in San Diego, keeping Langley informed of the arrivals and departures of ships, personnel, and a myriad of other naval detail.
Dong’s degree in electronics saw him rise rapidly in the Navy dockyard, not working on the ships, but in the many operations rooms on the shore. He had made himself a computer systems expert, and had personally installed many of the major lighting grids throughout the yard. At 37, he was the deputy chief electrical engineer, a civilian position, but always working closely with the Navy executive.
Each day he reported for work at 8:00 A.M. finishing at 5:00 P.M. He was subject to random searches by the guards on the way out, but not on the way in. And now he was preparing for his biggest task yet on behalf of his American masters. By Monday morning he and Lin would be on their way. They had just two more nights left in the little house near the Shamian Island bridge.
Many of their possessions were already packed. Their nine-year-old son Li was asleep, and Lin had gone to much trouble preparing what might be their last meal together in China — a superb Shao Xing chicken, cooked whole in Hua Diao wine, accompanied by flat rice noodles.
They dined together at the end of the small kitchen, drinking only water and saying little, as if afraid even the walls might have ears for their conversation. For tomorrow morning Dong would begin arguably the most dangerous mission ever attempted by a local CIA field operative in this part of the world.
They cleaned up after dinner together, and were in bed before midnight. Neither of them slept much, and by the time dawn broke over the city, Dong was already up, unzipping the melon and removing the electronic parts it hid so efficiently. He ripped open the black plastic bags and studied the small black box, the power pack that would last for around six hours. He checked the terminals, checked the wiring, checked the length of wire he had been given. Then he checked the main fitting, walking to the window, staring through the lens, focusing the cross-hairs, fitting the lens to the square box, then checking the connection between the power pack and the square box, nodding with satisfaction when he flicked the switch and watched the green light flicker, then glow firmly in the morning light. He was getting a half-million dollars for this. There had to be, he knew, no mistakes.
He carefully placed the black electronic parts in the lower section of his toolbox, hiding them among rolls of wiring and tape, keeping them separate, to look like random pieces of an electrician’s box of tricks. At 7:30 on this Saturday morning, his telephone rang and when he answered, a voice said simply, “Yes.” He knew who it was, the same man he had worked with for many years, an American broadcast executive downriver in Hong Kong.
Rarely has the word “yes” signaled so much. It meant that the American satellite operators in Fort Meade, Maryland, had picked up the red infrared “paint” on the pictures from space, showing that Seawolf’s nuclear reactor was running again as she lay alongside in the Canton base.
It meant that the electronic laser beam that would illuminate the precise area of the deck above the reactor should now be fixed in place.
It meant that Arnold Morgan was about to do what he had said he would do. He was going to hit Seawolf, and put Canton’s naval dockyard out of action with it.
Quinlei Dong said good-bye to Lin, who was trembling with fear but refusing to cry.
“Please, please be careful,” was all she could manage.
He placed his toolbox in the trunk and started his little car. He drove briskly east, along the Liuersan Road, and crossed the People’s Bridge. From here it was a straight 15-minute run down to the dockyard, and when he arrived the routine was simple.
“Hello, Mr. Quinlei,” said the guard at the gate. “You work too hard — it’s Saturday…should be home with the family.”
“No, Sun…not too hard…too slow…should have been finished last night!”
The guard laughed and waved him through, shouting, “You hurry up, now…nice day to take out the family.”
Dong drove slowly through the grim dockyard buildings, noticing as he had done constantly these past few days that the place was literally crawling with guards, all along the jetties, and then in a mighty regimented group near the American submarine. Quinlei the electrician, his privileged status displayed in a red and white sticker on his windshield, stayed away from the main dockside areas, driving along the quiet streets between the buildings a block from the water, a block from the submarine.
He had deliberately left incomplete a rewiring job he had been working on all week, up in the ceiling above an ops room. And now he made his way up the stairs once more, nodding to the guards at the doorway, and mentioning that he was going up to finish the new terminal for the main computer. The guards had seen him coming and going for two weeks and scarcely responded, just smiling and saying, “Okay, Mr. Sparks.”
At midday, he walked downstairs again, carrying his toolbox and his small lunch bag. He turned to the senior guard and said, “I’m going to have lunch down by the water, but I’ll be back. I’ve run into a problem, so don’t lock up…this thing has to be running for Monday morning. Right now I’ll be lucky to have it running by New Year!”
“What was it, sir…that main cable they dug up last month?”
“I thought it must be…but I’m not so sure now. I think there’s a fault inside the building. I might ask one of you to give me a hand for ten minutes this afternoon.”
“No trouble, sir…glad to help.”
Quinlei Dong strolled quietly back toward his car and moved around to the far side, out of the view of the guards. Then he rounded the corner of the building, checked to see that no one was watching, and sprinted across the street to another tall brick building in which there was a small, gray steel back door. This was the old dockyard stores, derelict now, unused for the past five years, and because of budget restrictions likely to stay that way for the next five. The modern Chinese Navy spent money on new ships, not old buildings.