Ian Slater - Choke Point

Charles nodded.

In a small pavement restaurant near Barberry’s Pub Café on Liangxi Road, Chang told Charles, “I’ve found out more since I called you. We think she was tortured because of a message she was trying to get to you.”

Charles wasn’t taking it in, unable to evict the sight of ice in her hair. So cold and final. Now the general was saying something about “stupid girl.” “ What ?”

“Wu Ling,” answered Chang. “I’ve told her never to repeat anything she hears me discussing with Beijing, but I guess it was a—” Chang paused, trying to think of the English word. “—a juicy story. About Li Kuan.”

The general saw the name meant nothing to Riser; understandably, given the fact that Kuan was a common enough name. Either that or the American cultural attaché was still deep in shock at just having confronted the bleak reality of his daughter’s death. She was — had been — a beautiful woman. “Li Kuan — the slag merchant,” Chang explained.

Riser, his mind still with his daughter, looked across at the general, refocusing. “Yes.” Everyone at the embassy knew about Li Kuan, the slag — leftover radioactive waste — dealer who was hawking the deadly material reclaimed out of everything from spent fuel rods to medical waste, with which terrorists could make a cheap radioactive bomb. And not all of Li Kuan’s merchandise was slag. Some, Bill Heinz said, was high weapons grade material stolen from poorly monitored Soviet installations. Riser vaguely recalled Heinz telling him that some “HWG material,” as they called it, had been housed in buildings that lacked the most basic video surveillance. All of which made Li Kuan one of the world’s deadliest salesmen.

“What’s he got to do with Wu Ling?” inquired Riser.

“Wu Ling and her BCLU friends were having a drink at Barberry’s Pub. Very popular among—”

“Big Nose students,” said Riser.

“Wu Ling went to the ladies’ room,” explained Chang. “There was a lineup. She overheard a student from Xinjiang province — it’s our most northwesterly province. It borders on four of the seven Stans. Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Uzbeki—”

“I know where it is,” said Riser.

“Many Muslims in the area,” continued Chang. “Wu Ling heard this student say soon the American and Chinese infidels would pay for their ungodliness, that there would be military attacks in the Northwest. You see, the Muslim fanatics believe anyone who isn’t Muslim—”

“I know,” said Riser impatiently. “We remember 9/11.”

“Yes, of course,” said Chang apologetically. “Well, these friends said this Li Kuan had done a deal with holy ones from Xinjiang to Taiwan, that soon their wrath would be unleashed against America and China, that the world would be run instead by the holy ones. I think in English you call them the ’moolas’?”

“Mullahs,” said Riser. “So?”

Chang leaned forward, his breath reeking of black bean sauce. “Wu Ling told your daughter and her other friends.”

Riser could guess the rest. “The fanatic or his friend realized they’d been overheard and followed Wu Ling and Mandy out of the pub.”

“Yes.”

“But only Mandy was—”

“Attacked, yes. Perhaps because she was the only American. The terrorists are more afraid of Americans than Chinese. They watched the Iraqi War on CNN. But I don’t doubt they intended to kill my Wu Ling and the other students who might have overheard them. But there was much confusion. Wu Ling said many other students came out of the pub. The assassins escaped. By now they are probably in Shanghai, or Xinjiang.” Which meant, Riser realized, they would never be found.

“You think it was just beer talk?” Riser asked. “About attacks in the Northwest?” He was thinking of Mandy’s frantic phone message. “The Northwest of China or America?”

Chang shrugged. “What puzzles me is, what were two Muslim fanatics doing in a pub?”

Riser hadn’t thought of that. Muslims — fanatical Muslims — were forbidden to drink alcohol. “Terrorists have no patent on hypocrisy,” said Charles.

“True,” agreed Chang.

Riser got up from the table. “I’ll pass the information on to Washington.”

“Good. It may be nothing,” said Chang, “but I will also pass it on to Beijing. The problem is, Mr. Riser, we must be careful.” The inflection Chang gave to “we” was clearly meant to refer to China, not America.

“I thought Beijing’s policy was to be tough on terrorists.”

“Yes,” said Chang as they walked back out to rejoin Wu Ling, “we agree with your President. But Beijing must be careful. If it were to attack the terrorists in Taiwan, for example, it could be accused by Washington of using antiterrorism as an excuse, a pretext, to take over Taiwan.”

Riser nodded and extended his hand. “You’ve been very kind to tell me all this, General. I won’t forget it.”

The general brushed it aside. “If it was my daughter—”

“Yes,” said Riser, more sharply than he intended, but he was already thinking of revenge for Mandy’s murder. The scum had tortured her.

For a man who was his country’s cultural attaché, a man presumably more sensitive to the finer things in life, he was taken aback by the depths of his hatred, by his seething desire for vengeance against whoever had killed his daughter. But the more he listened to Mandy’s last call, to the fear in her voice, its urgency, the evidence of her courage, the less he cared about the propriety of his thirst for revenge. He wanted the killer or killers — what would be the best he could hope for? Execute them the way the Chinese did it — a shot in the back of the neck? No, that was too quick.

In Beijing, the U.S. military attaché, or “MA,” as Bill Heinz was called, was trying not to be curt. He was naturally sympathetic to Riser’s loss, but dammit, didn’t the cultural attaché realize the possible import of Mandy Riser’s last message? “You should’ve told me about this right away, Charlie.”

“I did,” responded Riser, his voice echoing in the embassy’s enclosed security bubble. “I left you that memo before I flew down to Hangzhou.”

“Memo? A few words — something about a ’Wu Ling … nor … wes…. ’ C’mon, Charlie, I can’t send this to the agency. They’ll think I’ve gone China cuckoo. Too long away from the States.”

“How about the notes I left you about what General Chang told me?”

“Shit, Charlie, don’t you remember the flap in five-oh-two?”

Charlie had to think, military attachés preferring “Milspeak” to English. Five-oh-two? “May, two thousand and two — what about it?” said Charlie.

“Jesus, Charlie,” Heinz said more cordially. “What do you CAs do all day anyway? Listen to Peking Opera?”

Before Riser could answer the jest, the military attaché hurried on. “May two thousand and two, Charlie. Congressional hearing on the security gaps before 9/11? How come al-Midhar and Alhamzi, two of the pricks who took over American Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon, had been identified by the Agency in Kuala Lumpur as al Qaeda operatives — as far back as January oh-two — but we didn’t pass the info on to the FBI or State Department? And how come the FBI itself failed on one of its own agent’s tips to find out why so many Arabs were taking flight training courses in the U.S.? How come our own Navy secretly builds research vessels and doesn’t tell brother agencies about it?”

Heinz answered his own long-winded question. “Interservice rivalry, yes, but just as often, Charlie, it’s because people simply don’t pass on the intel in time !”