Once in the back of an armored Roewe 950 sedan, the two men looked at each other for a long moment.
“Your thoughts?” the two-star asked his boss.
Su lit a cigarette as he said, “Wei thinks we will fire a few warning shots into the South China Sea and the world community will step back and allow us to proceed unmolested.”
“And you think?”
Su smiled a sly but genuine smile as he slipped his lighter back into his coat pocket. “I think we are going to war.”
“War with who, sir?”
Su shrugged. “America. Who else?”
“Excuse me for saying so, sir. But you do not sound displeased.”
Su laughed aloud behind a cloud of smoke. “I welcome the endeavor. We are ready, and only by bloodying the nose of the foreign devils in a quick and decisive action will we be able to pursue all of our goals in the region.” He paused, then darkened a little before saying, “We are ready . . . only if we act now. Wei’s five-year plan is foolish. All his objectives need to be met within a year or the opportunity will be lost. Lightning war, attack quickly on all fronts, create a new reality on the ground that the world at large will have no choice but to accept. That is the only way to succeed.”
“Will Wei agree to this?”
The general shifted his large frame in his seat to look out the window as the eight-vehicle motorcade headed west toward Beijing.
With determination he replied, “No. Therefore, I will have to create a reality that he will have no choice but to accept.”
THIRTEEN
Valentin Kovalenko awoke shortly before five a.m. in his room at the Blue Orange, a health club, vacation spa, and hotel in the northeastern Letnany district of Prague, Czech Republic. He’d spent three days here already, and he’d taken saunas and received massages and eaten excellent food, but apart from these luxuries he had prepared diligently for an operation he would undertake before dawn this morning.
His orders had come, as the mafia man who’d helped break him out of prison had promised, via a secure instant-messaging program called Cryptogram. Shortly after arriving at the safe house set up by the Saint Petersburg mafia, he’d been given a computer with the software, along with documents and money and instructions to locate himself in Western Europe. He had done as he was told, settling in the south of France and logging in to his machine once a day to check for further orders.
For two weeks there was no contact. He went to a local physician and received treatment and medicines for maladies lingering from his time in the Moscow prison, and he recovered his strength. Then one morning he opened Cryptogram and began his daily password and authentication process. Once that was completed, a single line of text appeared in the window of the instant messenger.
“Good morning.”
“Who are you?” Kovalenko typed.
“I am your handler, Mr. Kovalenko.”
“What do I call you?”
“Call me Center.”
With a half-smile Valentin typed, “May I know if that is Mr. Center, or Ms. Center, or are you perhaps a construct of the Internet itself?”
This pause was longer than the others.
“I think the latter is fair to say.” After a short pause the words on Kovalenko’s screen came faster still. “Are you prepared to get started?”
Valentin fired back a quick response. “I want to know who I am working for.” It seemed reasonable, although he had been warned by the mobster that his new employer was not reasonable.
“I acknowledge your concern about your situation, but I do not have the time to assuage these concerns.”
Valentin Kovalenko imagined he was carrying on a conversation with the computer itself. The responses were stiff, wooden, and logical.
He is a native English speaker, Kovalenko thought to himself. But then he checked that. Even though Valentin was fluent in English, he could not be sure someone else was a native speaker. Perhaps if he heard him talk he would know for certain, but for now he just told himself his master was comfortable with the language.
Kovalenko asked, “If you are an entity that serves to commit espionage via computer, what is my role?”
The reply appeared quickly: “In-field human asset management. Your specialty.”
“The man who picked me up outside the prison said you were everywhere. All-knowing, all-seeing.”
“Is that a question?”
“If I refuse to follow instructions?”
“Use your imagination.”
Kovalenko’s eyebrows rose. He was not sure if that showed a sense of humor on the part of Center, or just a flat threat. He sighed. He’d already begun working for the entity by coming here and setting up his apartment and computer. It was clear he had no leverage to argue.
He typed, “What are my instructions?”
Center answered this, which led Valentin to the job in Prague.
His physical recovery from the ravages of bronchitis and ringworm and a diet that consisted primarily of barley soup and moldy bread was an ongoing process. He had been healthy and fit before going into the Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention facility, and he retained the discipline to recover faster than most men.
The gym here at the Blue Orange had helped him along. He’d worked out for hours each of the past three days, and this, along with his early-morning jogs, had filled him with energy and vigor.
He dressed in his running gear, a black tracksuit with just a thin gray racing stripe on one side, and he pushed his black knit cap over his dirty-blond hair. He slipped a black-bladed folding knife, a set of lock picks, and small felt bag the size of his fist into his jacket pocket, and he zipped the pocket closed.
After this came dark gray socks and his black Brooks running shoes, and he put thin Under Armour gloves over his hands before heading out of his room.
In moments he was outside the hotel, jogging to the south in a cool light rain.
For the first kilometer of his run he jogged in the grass along Tupolevova, and he saw not a soul in the dark around him other than a couple of delivery vehicles that rumbled past on the street.
He turned west on Krivoklátská and kept his pace leisurely. He noticed that his heart was beating harder than usual this early in the run, and that surprised him somewhat. When he worked in London he would run ten kilometers through Hyde Park most mornings, and he barely broke a sweat except during the warmest months of the year.
He knew he wasn’t as fit as he’d been in the UK, but, he suspected, his marginal health was not the reason for his thumping chest.
No, he was nervous this morning because he was back in the field.
Even though Valentin Kovalenko had risen to the rank of deputy rezident of the United Kingdom in Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, the SVR, a person in that position does not customarily undertake actual field operations; brush passes and dead drops and black-bag jobs are the work of men lower on the espionage food chain. No, Valentin Kovalenko did most of his work as a spymaster from the comforts of his office in the Russian embassy or over beef Wellington at Hereford Road or perhaps ox cheek with watercress, bone marrow, and salsa cooked in a Josper oven at Les Deux Salons.
Those were the good old days, he thought to himself as he slowed his jog a bit to try to control the heavy thump in his chest. Today his work would not be particularly dangerous, though it would be considerably less highbrow than his life and work in London had been.
He had done his share of grunt work for Russia, of course; no one could make deputy rezident without coming up the ranks. He’d been an illegal, an operative working without official cover status for Russia, in many postings across Europe, as well as a brief stint in Australia. He’d been younger then, of course, just twenty-four when he worked in Sydney and still under thirty by the time he left operations for desk work. But he enjoye
d the duty.
He turned on to Beranových, heading north, following a route he’d been running for the past two mornings, though today he would divert from the route, but for only a few minutes.
The rain picked up a bit, soaking him but giving him better cover than the darkness alone could provide.
Kovalenko smiled. Spies loved the dark. And spies loved the rain.
He felt good to be performing this task, though as far as he was concerned this was a weird little op, and whatever his minders hoped to achieve with it, Valentin thought the probability for success was rather low.
Just a few dozen meters after turning onto Beranových he looked both left and right, and then back over his shoulder. The street was clear, so he darted quickly to the right. He knelt down at a small iron gate in a whitewashed wall and quickly picked the simple lock. It was a residential gate, and the lock was a cinch, but it had been so long since he’d tested his lock-picking skills he allowed himself a brief smile as he put the picks back in his jacket.
In seconds he was in the front garden of a two-story home, and he ran forward, black clothing on a black morning, moving to the right of the house and then passing through a wooden gate that separated front yard from backyard. He ran past an aboveground swimming pool that was closed for the year, and he made his way between a potting shed and a storage shed to a back wall that ran along the eastern property line of the private home. In seconds Valentin Kovalenko was over this wall, dropping down into wet grass, where he found himself exactly where his research on Google Maps told him he would be.
He was now past the walls, exterior lights, and guard shacks surrounding the Science and Technology Park VZLÚ.
Kovalenko’s new minder, the English speaker named Center who communicated via secure instant messaging, had not told him the point of today’s exercise, or even much about the target itself other than the address and the marching orders of his mission there. But the Russian did his own research, and from it he learned that VZLÚ was an aerospace research and test facility, and the work here focused on aerodynamics, aircraft engines, and helicopter rotors.
It was a large campus comprising many buildings and different test sites.
Whatever Valentin’s employer wanted here, it would not be up to Valentin himself to get it. Instead he’d been ordered to simply breach the physical security, and to leave some items behind.
Under cover of darkness and rain he knelt down in the first small parking lot he came to, and he took the bag out of his jacket pocket. From it he pulled a matte gray computer thumb drive and, against his better judgment, he simply laid it down in a parking space. The device was labeled “Test results,” but he was careful to leave it facedown.
Kovalenko was no fool. He was certain this thumb drive did not contain any test results, or no real test results, anyway. It would contain a computer virus, and if Valentin’s employer was any damn good, the virus would be disguised and built to execute as soon as it was attached via a USB port to any computer in the network here. The plan was, it was clear to Kovalenko, that someone would find the drive and put it into their computer to see what files it contained. As soon as anything was opened on the drive, some sort of a virus would infect the computer, and then the network itself.
Valentin had been instructed to place only one drive outside each building in the facility so that the ruse would have a better chance of success. If a half-dozen techies all walked into the same building having just found a mysterious device in the parking lot, it would be more likely that two or more of them would bump into each other and red flags would go up. It was still likely that most people who found the drive would have suspicions but, Kovalenko knew through his own research about the facility, the network connected the different divisions together, so only one successful infection of a client machine, anywhere inside the VZLÚ, would affect the work of them all.
Just like a phishing e-mail, Valentin Kovalenko himself was an attack vector.
It wasn’t a bad plan, Valentin admitted, but he did not know the details of the mission that would convince him it would be a success. He wondered what would happen once it became clear to the IT department of the science and technology concern that two dozen similar or identical thumb drives had just appeared on their property. That would tip them off that a client-based hacking attempt was under way, and that would probably cause them to shut their network down to search for the virus. Valentin did not know much about computer espionage, but he found it hard to believe that the virus would not then be detected and wiped clean before any major compromise of the system had taken place.
But again, Center had not seen fit to include him in the planning of the operation. It was somewhat insulting, really. Kovalenko assumed he was working for a corporate espionage outfit; this guy and his goons would know Kovalenko had been a high-ranking intelligence operative, trusted to a crucial posting, in one of the greatest espionage concerns in the world, the SVR.
As he crawled on his hands and knees between two small utility trucks parked in the lot near the property’s small grass-field airport, on his way to drop another thumb drive onto the wet concrete, he wondered just who the fuck these industrial spies thought they were, using him as their errand boy.
He did have to admit, though, that this beat prison, the risk was low, and the pay was good.
FOURTEEN
The second meeting between President and General Secretary Wei Zhen Lin and Chairman Su Ke Qiang took place in Zhongnanhai, the government compound in central Beijing. Both Su’s and Wei’s offices were here, as well as Wei’s living quarters, so an evening private meeting was arranged between the two in the study off Wei’s private bedroom.
Wei’s secretary was present, as was Su’s second-in-command, much as they had been a week before at the Beidaihe resort on the coast. This evening would be different, however, because this time Chairman Su would be the one making the presentation.
A valet served tea for both men, offered nothing to the two secretaries, and then left them alone.
Wei had given Su a week to work with his intelligence staff to adopt a plan to project their power further into the South China Sea as the opening move of Wei’s gambit to absorb Hong Kong and Taiwan. He knew that Su would have slept little, eaten little, and thought about nothing else in the interim.
Su had been thinking about sending men, ships, and planes into the South China Sea for more than a decade, after all.
As they sat down for their meeting, Chairman Su held his report in his hand. A second copy was carried by Xia, Su’s second-in-command, and Wei thought he would be given one of the reports to look over while they discussed it.
But before he handed over the document, Chairman Su said, “Tongzhi, recently you were almost thrown from power because you spoke the truth to those around you, the truth was difficult to hear, and those around you would not listen to it.”
Wei agreed with a nod.
“I now find myself in a position similar to the one you found yourself in. You have laid out a five-year plan to bring the nation back to a strength and glory not enjoyed in generations. Reluctantly, however, I have to tell you about some aspects of our current military situation that will make your five-year plan difficult, if not impossible.”
Wei cocked his head in surprise. “The objectives I seek are not going to be won through military power alone. I only need military support in controlling the area. Are we not as strong as the annual reports have led us to believe?”
Su waved this away with his hand. “We are strong, militarily. The strongest we have ever been, overall. Twenty percent growth in expenditures over the past two decades have built our land, sea, air, and space capabilities greatly.”
After this, Su heaved a sigh.
“Then tell me what troubles you.”
“I fear our strength is at its greatest point right now, right this mom
ent, but our strength will soon wane relative to our adversaries’.”
Wei did not understand. He was on shaky ground with matters of a military nature. “Why will it wane?”
Su paused long enough for Wei to understand that he would not answer the question immediately or directly. The explanation he would deliver would involve some background. “We can, beginning tomorrow morning, eliminate any opposition in our region. But that is not what we need. We must prepare to combat one adversary, and one adversary only. Once we neutralize this foe, the rest of our potential conflicts will be won before they are even fought.”
Wei said, “You think the United States will involve itself in our forays into the South China Sea?”
“I am certain of it, comrade.”
“And our military capability—”
“I will be frank with you. Our conventional capability is, overall, a shadow of that of the United States. In virtually every category, number of weapons, quality of equipment, training of forces, down to the last ship, aircraft, tank, truck, and sleeping bag, the Americans have superior equipment. They have also spent the last ten years fighting, while we have spent it training.”
Wei’s face hardened. “It sounds like our nation has been poorly served by our military during the two-decade-long modernization.”
Su was not angered by this comment. Instead he nodded. “That is the other side of the coin. This is the good news. Many aspects of our strategic modernization have been successful.
“We have a great advantage in one war-fighting discipline. In any conflict with any adversary, it is a given fact that we will possess complete and utter information dominance.
“Chairman Mao’s army, the army that your father and my father served in, has been replaced by something greater. Mechanized C4ISR. Command, Control, Computers, Communications, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance. We are well resourced, well connected, well organized. And our forces are in place for an immediate attack.”
“Attack? You are speaking of cyberwarfare?”