Ten minutes later he was on his way through the early morning traffic, preparing himself for the dressing down he was about to receive, and praying that was all it would be.
Duan entered the conference room with a well-practiced air of humility. Only three of the members were present. General Tianlang, deputy commander of the Shenyang military region, was not in Beijing. Yew glared at him as he crossed the room. “Well, what do you have to say for yourself, commander?”
“I can offer no excuses, sir,” Duan said. “I am responsible for what has happened. I can understand if you no longer trust me to oversee the project.”
The admiral, still only half-dressed and clearly annoyed at being there, snickered and said, “And replace you with who?”
Duan said nothing.
“You are sure the bodies will not be identified?” Yew said.
“Yes, sir. The investigators have concluded that the explosion was the result of multiple grenades.”
“You think it was a trap?” the admiral said.
“No, sir,” Duan said. “There is no way the man could have known he was being followed. I suspect the grenades were there for just this purpose. Ensign Liang is—was—one of my best field operatives. She would not have allowed him to set off an explosive unless it had been rigged.”
“And what of the American?” Yew asked.
“He was apprehended during a search of the ship. The political officer onboard the Beixiang is certain they knew he was on board.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, sir.” Duan said. “I suspect it may have been a trap. It’s possible Jasper Klein reported our offer to the American authorities and was followed to Dubai. If I may say, sir, as problematic as the situation is, he knows nothing of the reason he was apprehended.”
“Perhaps not,” Yew said, “but they know about the Beixiang.”
“The ship can be replaced,” Duan said. “I’ve already informed the captain he will not be docking at Nampo.”
“And the cargo?” Yew said.
“It should be delayed by no more than a day or two while we look for another vessel.”
Yew nodded somberly. “Very well. There is to be no more recruitment from abroad.”
Yew looked around the table, and seeing no dissent, continued, “If you need talented people, you’ll just have to find them here. Frankly, I find it somewhat humiliating that we need to look to the West at all.”
“If I may, sir,” Duan said. “I objected to taking the American.”
Yew looked up in surprise. “So I am to blame then?”
“No, sir,” Duan said. “I was merely—”
“I suggest you get busy looking for a new ship, commander. The situation in Goa will be dealt with by the foreign ministry.”
Duan stood.
“And commander,” Yew said.
“Yes, sir?”
“Let this be the last time we meet like this. You may be a hard man to replace, but you’re not indispensable.”
The Pandora
Friday 15 June 2007
0900 EEST
Mitch was standing at the chart table on the bridge of the Pandora. Next to him, Captain Almila was unfolding a navigational chart of the East China Sea.
“It sailed here,” Mitch said, pointing to a location near the coastline of the Korean peninsula. “Then it just turned and headed northwest.”
Almila took a pencil and sketched the line, then looked at it for a moment and said, “And you think it was headed for North Korea?”
“Why else would it get so close?”
Almila studied the map a moment longer and nodded. “There’s no obvious reason it would have gone so far out of its way that I can see.”
“That’s what I thought,” Mitch said.
Mitch thanked Almila for his time and returned to the hangar. Heinz, Watkins and Naoko had spent the last two days compiling a complete navigational manual for Gandalf. So far they had discovered a number of new features, including the use of all four viewing ports as screens that could track separate locations simultaneously, thereby putting an end to any possibility that the system used a single orbiting platform to provide the imagery, while casting no light at all on how it actually worked. In addition, they had discovered that whatever the system had put into orbit was picking up signal traffic from most, if not all, the Earth-based satellite transmitters, although the form in which these signals were relayed to RP One was currently just an incoherent jumble of alien code.
“What did he say?” Heinz asked when Mitch joined them.
“He thinks I’m right,” Mitch said. “It was headed for North Korea.”
“You better call Richelle and let her know,” Heinz said.
On the screen tracking the Beixiang the ship had now rounded the Bohai Strait and set a direct course for its home port at Huludao.
Mitch left to call Richelle. When he returned there was none of his jovial self in evidence.
“What is it?” Heinz asked.
“Mohindar is dead,” he said.
They all looked at him.
“Dead?” Heinz repeated. “How?”
“She doesn’t know,” Mitch shrugged. “There was an explosion in his apartment. He was killed along with two others who haven’t been identified yet.”
“Jesus,” Naoko said. “Does it have to do with Jasper?”
“I don’t know,” Mitch said. “Pretty odd timing though, don’t you think?”
Washington Post Editorial
In a move that has taken many by surprise following the recent political upheaval in Pyongyang, the Chinese foreign minister announced today that Beijing is committing itself to the process of North-South relations on a scale previously unseen. Presented as a long term strategy for reconciliation, the plan is set to involve not only political overtures toward both nations, but an economic plan which will see a significant rise in the level of Chinese investment in its Communist neighbor.
Also part of the plan is a joint venture between China and the two Koreas, the first of its kind, that will see an expansion of the existing Kaesong industrial area in the North, alongside an equally ambitious development across the border. According to a spokesman for the China Motor Corporation (CMC), a partially state-owned truck and bus manufacturer, the company has been offered generous concessions to move some of its manufacturing facilities to the region. During a speech in Delaware earlier today, the president said he welcomes the move by China, saying it was a sign that Beijing is finally “living up to its status as the major power in the region”, and that economic stability in North Korea can only have a positive effect on its relationship with the South. However, when asked if he thought this meant that China may also have a role to play in the ongoing tension over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions, he was less enthusiastic.
And not everyone is welcoming the news either. In an interview on CNN following the president’s comments, Republican senator Harold King of Delaware warned that allowing China to assume the role of “mentor to the new regime” as he put it, may only serve to exacerbate the problem unless Beijing specifically states that nuclear disarmament will be part of the discussion. “Allowing the Chinese to take advantage of their cheap labor and non-existent regulation might reduce tensions on the Yalu River,” Senator King said, “but to think that will change their attitude toward the United States is naïve. North Korea has one political objective, and that’s North Korea. And if the President thinks we can put political pressure on the Chinese to bring them to heel, he’s ignoring two decades of history. We can’t even get them to devalue their currency.”
So is this good news or not? Personally, I think it’s a step in the right direction, if nothing else.
The Pandora
Friday 15 June 2007
2300 EEST
The Beixiang arrived at Huludao under the watchful gaze of two very different observers. The first was Commander Duan, who followed proceedings from the window of the port security tower. The second, sitting in his accustomed seat on the bridge of RP One several thousand miles away, was Mitch.
The rest of the team, save for Naoko and Watkins, had all returned to Aurora to make preparations for the imminent arrival of what was arguably the strangest supply drop in human history. Watkins—no spring chicken at 64—had retired several hours earlier. Naoko had managed another two hours before doing the same.
Mitch made a concerted effort to put the idea of the resupply and its many tantalizing possibilities out of his mind and concentrate on the task at hand.
Long gone were the days spent huddling over his own barely legible notes, while carefully prodding the controls on the command chair. Much like he had taken to the keyboard and mouse as a young computer enthusiast, the chair and its strange interface were quickly becoming second nature to him. He brought up the tracker he had placed on the Beixiang before its arrival in Goa and sat back to watch. Two tugboats were gently pushing the ship into its berth beneath a container crane as the crew cast down the lines. No sooner had the gangway been lowered than the cargo bay doors were opened and the crane operator began lifting pallets from the hold. The first dozen or so each contained four oblong wooden crates. Mitch began capturing shots of the cargo using a digital camera from various altitudes, right down to the full screen image of the company logos and part numbers, as well as several of the shipping labels. It took just over three hours.
Mitch wasn’t sure how long ago he had nodded off, but when he sat up and returned his attention to the screen another ship had taken the Beixiang’s place beneath the crane, and the operator was busy reloading the cargo. Mitch placed a tracker on the new ship with two deft movements of his thumb and climbed down from the seat to stretch his legs.
On the counter next to the nearest wall terminal sat a laptop computer plugged into an extension cord that snaked its way in through the gangway entrance. Parallel to this ran a network cable wired into the ship’s satellite link through the observation room outside. The Pandora had a wireless network and enough rebroadcasting nodes to cover most of the ship, but these proved useless within a hundred feet or so of RP One.
When the circulation had returned to his lower limbs, Mitch sat down at the terminal, transferred the pictures he had taken and began searching for the part number stenciled to the side of one of the crates. According to the manufacturers’ own website they were industrial batteries intended primarily for use with heavy-duty mining equipment. Mitch saved the page and tried another part number. This turned out to be a five-speed transmission for use with electric motors made by a German firm called ERL. He searched several other numbers with varying degrees of success. Some related to machine parts, while others denoted specific gauges of electrical cable or rubber hose, as well as several generic pressure gauges and sensors. The larger crates contained only the name of the manufacturer, which all turned out to be in the mining equipment business.
The numbers checked, he turned to the shipping labels. It took him two hours to hack into the manifest database in Dubai. Most of this time was spent searching through obscure forums for updates on security and encryption technology introduced since his last foray into the art over a year ago. He began with the batteries, which had been manufactured in South Carolina and shipped to Dubai through the port of Charleston. The buyer, according to the entry, was LKM, a Chinese truck maker based in Shanghai. Everything else onboard the Beixiang fit the same mold, each consignment arriving in Dubai the week before it set sail, and each destined for customers on the Chinese mainland. However, as soon as the cargo reached the emirate it had all been sold on to a company named Panjin Partners, which now appeared as the recipient on every manifest. Panjin, according to the official list of Chinese state-owned enterprises, was a contract arm of the People’s Navy.
Mitch managed to stay awake just long enough to see the newly loaded vessel leave port. He watched it through bleary eyes, the lids of which were growing too heavy to hold up. A minute later he was snoring.
Ganymede
Peter Bershadsky had named the ship Origin for the simple reason that he had to call it something. Her real name—as Christopher Watkins was soon to discover—was in fact Kashkal. Literally translated, it meant star-jumper.
It had long been assumed by the men and women of Aurora that the giant craft, having lost its crew, had been dormant since its arrival. This assumption was only partially accurate.
Origin no longer received human input from its internal control interface, that much was true, but she was far from dormant. With over 97 percent of the ship’s systems being fully automated, the central computer had simply responded to the loss of the crew by shutting down the life support systems and activating the hibernation protocols designed to keep her operational indefinitely. Nor had the ship been anywhere near Jupiter when this occurred, but over four hundred million miles away, or over twice its current distance from Earth. Receiving no orders to the contrary, Origin had navigated itself into position in accordance with the last valid set of instructions. Once in place it had dutifully deployed the delivery module containing, amongst other things, RP One and her three sister platforms. When the command to drop RP One had failed to materialize, the module had returned, leaving behind only the atmospheric monitoring beacon that Bershadsky and his team would eventually locate through Siren Call, thereby setting in motion all that was to follow.
By the time the call to redeploy RP One came some two millennia later, Origin had completed no fewer than 140 automated reconnaissance assignments, extending to every planet and moon in the solar system, including Venus, Mercury and Earth’s own moon. Unbeknownst to Heinz and his staff, the inadvertent launch of what Mitch now called Gandalf had triggered the second phase of the Earth landing mission, the first part of which was the delivery of critical equipment and weapons. That the “crew” in this case belonged to a different race of men entirely was irrelevant to the ship’s onboard systems, which used no biometric or password related security protocols of any kind. Nor did the program which ran the ship’s central computer contain any logic circuits that would allow it to draw its own conclusions about the long absence of its human masters, or their sudden reappearance. Thus, when Mitch transmitted the coordinates for the first drop, the equipment for the far larger second drop was assembled by the automated systems on Origin and loaded onto the waiting transport without query or hesitation.