Tanner checked his watch. Forty minutes to go. He felt a flutter in his belly and took a deep breath. Relax, Briggs, he commanded himself. Almost there.
He aimed his camera’s long lens on the gate and saw the day’s first tourists entering the park. He scanned the paths and courtyards until he had a rough count of several dozen people, an even mix of Chinese families and Western sightseers.
He got up and wandered the paths around the temple for twenty minutes, snapping the occasional photo and studying his map, all the while keeping one eye on the main gate. Five minutes before the meeting time, Briggs was scanning the Front Palace when something caught his eye.
A Chinese mother and father with a child were stopped beside the fountain feeding the ducks, when suddenly the toddler lost his balance and plunged into the water. The father rushed forward to help. As he stooped over to pick up the child, his coat swung open, revealing a shoulder holster.
Heart in his throat, Tanner tightened on the man and saw, trailing from his left ear, a nearly transparent wire that led down into his collar. What the hell is this. … He checked his watch: Time. He swiveled the lens to the main gate. As if on cue, General Han Soong stepped onto the path.
No, no, no. …
Briggs looked around. In a nearby garden bed, a caretaker knelt in the dirt with a trowel. The man looked up, caught Tanner’s eye, then glanced away. Briggs felt his heart lurch. They were here, the Guoanbu was here. A dozen questions whirled in his brain, but he quashed them. The “how” of it didn’t matter. He and Soong were standing in the middle of a trap.
Tanner’s mind raced. This couldn’t be happening—shouldn’t be happening, but it was.
At the main gate, Soong was strolling toward the fountain. From his vantage point, Tanner could see them now, Guoanbu agents moving in, exiting nearby pavilions and walking along the trails on either side of Soong. Oblivious, Soong kept walking.
From the corner of his eye, Briggs saw the caretaker raise his wrist to his mouth and speak into the hidden microphone there. Calling in backup, Tanner realized. Having assumed Soong’s controller would be close to the meeting site, they’d moved in too early, leaving Tanner outside their perimeter. He still had a chance. But what about Soong?
As he asked the question, he saw a pair of agents trot up behind Soong and grab his arms.
Tanner was torn. Leave, Briggs, get away! There was nothing to be done for Soong now.
Forcing an easy pace, he turned and began strolling back toward the temple; a hundred yards beyond it he could see the vine-draped wall. He mounted the temple’s wooden walkway.
“You there! Stop!”
Tanner glanced over his shoulder. The caretaker was charging toward him. Tanner broke into a sprint, turned the temple corner, then stopped and flattened himself against the wall. The pounding of feet drew nearer. The caretaker barged around the corner, saw Tanner, tried to backpedal. Tanner grabbed him by the collar, pulled him close, and lashed out with a short jab to the man’s kidney. The man gasped and arched backward. Tanner slammed his fist into his temple, knocking him unconscious.
He pulled back the man’s sleeve, revealing the microphone. “I see him!” Tanner shouted in his best Mandarin. “Bifeng Temple! Hurry!”
He sprinted to the wall, took a bounding leap onto the vines, and started climbing. At the top, he stopped, turned back. He focused his camera on the main gate. There, being led away by a dozen men, was Han Soong. Just before he disappeared from view, Soong glanced over his shoulder.
Looking for me, Tanner thought in anguish. God, I’m sorry Han.
He tore his eyes away, rolled himself over the wall, and started running.
Though the deep, twisting gorges and towering rock spires of the highlands provided the ideal hiding place for the test facility, they did little for traveling comfort — especially in a Russian-built Hind-D attack helicopter designed more for durability than luxury.
Such is the price of secrecy, Kyung Xiang thought, and gripped the armrests a bit tighter.
As the head of China’s Guoanbu, or Ministry of State Security, Xiang was charged with many secrets, but the facility they’d just left surpassed all of them — except for Rubicon itself, of course. That he’d been entrusted with such an operation was both exhilarating and daunting. If it succeeded — if he succeeded — China would become the world’s premier superpower. As it should be.
But that was only part of it, Xiang knew. This was also his chance at redemption.
In his thirty-first year of government service, Xiang had seen firsthand the brutality of Chinese politics, but until the Soong affair he’d never felt it personally. That he’d thwarted what could have been a disaster for the People’s Republic was never mentioned; in fact, the mere proximity of disaster had nearly sealed his fate. His superiors had painted him as the scapegoat with typical Mandarin efficiency. One day a promising Guoanbu chief, the next a mere agent. His rise to the top of the MSS had surprised many people, and truth be told had Rubicon not landed in his lap, he would be on his way out.
Everything hinged on Rubicon. Failure didn’t bear thinking about.
Xiang felt himself mashed against the door as the pilot rolled the Hind onto its side. An outcropping of rock swept past the windshield, so close Xiang could have reached out and touched it.
He glanced over his shoulder. The two civilians in the back were slumped in their seats, their faces pasty. Hopefully they would recover. He wanted his passengers clearheaded when they reached their destination; nothing should blunt the impact of what they were going to see.
The gorge widened and the pilot descended, following the river until it opened into a lake. The village — little more than a cluster of huts surrounded by millet fields and forest — lay on the far shore.
“Land upwind of the lake,” Xiang ordered the pilot.
They banked around the shoreline and set down on the outskirts of the village. As the rotors spooled down, Xiang got out and gestured for the passengers to do the same.
“What is this place?” asked the older man, the director of the facility.
“Just a village,” Xiang said. “One village amid thousands. It doesn’t have a name.”
“Where is everyone?” the younger man, the director’s assistant, asked.
“Good question. Come, I’ll show you.”
Xiang led them down the empty main road to the edge of the village. Ahead lay a berm of dirt almost twenty feet tall. Xiang started up the mound, the two men struggling to keep up. When they reached the top, Xiang pointed down the opposite slope.
At the base of the mound lay a pit, ten feet deep, ten feet wide, and some fifty yards long. Stacked to its rim were bodies — hundreds of them, all nude — ranging in age from six months to ninety years.
The older man sputtered, his eyes wide. “Oh….Oh, my—”
“Your what?” Xiang said. “Your Buddha? This is not the work of your fat little God. This is your work.”
“What do you mean?” said the assistant director. “What happened here?”
“Their water supply was contaminated by a type of radioactive isotope, I’m told. The test you performed at the facility last month not only failed, but some of the runoff found its way into the river, then into this lake. The villagers drank the water and fed it to their livestock. Now they’re all dead.”