Riding the Snake (1998) (43 page)

"I'm aware of that," Willy said calmly, in his perfect, unaccented English. "To that end, if you could supply me with a paper and pen, I will prepare a short list of five questions."

Wheeler and Tanisha had been watching Willy's interview through a one-way mirror in the adjoining observation room. After Rick Verba had gone to get the polygraph machine, Cameron Jobe and Judge Hollingsworth left to get coffee, leaving Willy Wo Lap alone. Tanisha left the observation room and followed them into the coffee room, also leaving Wheeler alone.

Wheeler looked through the mirror at the Triad leader, sitting quietly in the room just beyond the glass. The man he was staring at had ordered his little brother's murder. Wheeler felt guilt for not protecting Prescott, guilt and intense, uncontrollable anger. Suddenly, he lost all control. Wheeler wanted to see fear on the Triad leader's face. He wanted Wo Lap Ling to realize it was Prescott's death that was causing his demise, but the Shan Chu didn't seem at all worried. He had a look of passive indifference on his aged face.

"Whatever happens, promise me you'll do the right thing."

Now Wheeler was out of the observation room and into the corridor. Before anybody could stop him, he opened the door to the interrogation room and barged in, not even sure what his mission was, or what he was about to do.

As Wo Lap Ling looked up, Wheeler saw recognition flicker in Willie's eyes. Since they had never seen one another, it was all the confirmation of guilt Wheeler needed.

"I just wanted to tell you that it doesn't really matter what the result of this fucking lie detector test is or what you tell the police," Wheeler said, "because if they don't get you, I will." Wheeler's rage was burning. "You're finished! You'll never get out of jail!"

"Do not mistake inactivity for defeat," Willy said pleasantly. "The superior man lives his life without one preconceived course of action. He must decide, from moment to moment, what is the right thing to do."

Wheeler moved across the room and yanked Willy out of the metal chair and up onto his feet. Willy was only five foot five and Wheeler held him erect, by his lapels, towering above him.

"Hey, asshole, I want you to know exactly why this is happening." There was a moment of powerful silence in the room. "You had my brother killed. You had your street thugs push an acupuncture needle through his heart. That's why you're going down, because you killed Prescott Cassidy."

"Take your hands off me," Willy said, his voice now hissing with anger, fear, and hatred. "Your brother was willing to take our money, but not willing to accept his responsibilities. You may have more courage, but you have his same mistaken sense of direction."

"Wanna bet?" Wheeler yelled into the Triad leader's face.

The door opened and Rick Verba entered with two uniformed police officers pushing a polygraph machine on a rolling cart. Tanisha came in behind him. "What the fuck is going on here?" Verba asked, as he saw Wheeler with his hands on Willy's lapels almost lifting him off the floor. "Let go of him."

Wheeler turned Willy loose.

"Jesus Christ, you're threatening him? You're gonna fuck up this investigation."

"There isn't going to be an investigation, is there, Willy? Willy can't stand an investigation. Look at him--he's already found a hole to wiggle through."

"Get the fuck out of here," Verba said, and the two uniforms pulled Wheeler and Tanisha out of the room.

Willy watched them go, hatred contorting and twitching on his face. He tried to regain his sense of calm, but the raging anger he had fought to control his entire life would not leave him.

The superior man develops up, but the inferior man develops down. Suddenly, Willy saw the truth in Confucius's ancient warning. From impure acts come bad results.

For the first time in almost fifty years, Willy had a sudden paralyzing moment of fear.

Five minutes later the polygraph operator arrived. She was a forty
-
year-old woman named Helen Staggs and was the best the LAPD had on staff. Willy removed his coat jacket and was hooked to the machine. The electrodes were extended around his chest, the clips attached to the fingertips of his left hand.

Mrs. Staggs turned on the machine and set a level to determine skin electrolysis and respiratory function. She asked Willy a few test questions to be sure it was functioning correctly, then she looked up at Cameron and nodded.

Tanisha, Wheeler, and Rick Verba were now in the adjoining room watching through a mirrored glass window.

Wheeler was still enraged. Willy had again assumed a look of indifference.

"Is your correct name Wo Lap Ling?" Cameron began.

"I will not answer any of your questions," Willy stated. "I would like only to answer the five questions I prepared. I think you will find it well worth your while."

Cameron looked over at Judge Hollingsworth, who shrugged. Willy withdrew the handwritten note from his pocket and handed it to Cameron Jobe, who opened it and read the questions to himself. First a puzzled look crossed his face. Disbelief quickly followed. "You can't be serious?" Cameron said. "This is outrageous!"

Willy fought to exhibit a serene exterior. "Ask the questions," he said. "You will see by this machine that I am telling the truth."

Cameron glared down at the list of questions as though it were dog shit in his hand. "Do you have a nuclear device in your possession?" he began.

"Yes, I do."

"Is it a portable Russian knapsack bomb?"

"Yes, it is."

"Is it currently in Los Angeles?"

"Yes."

"Is it set to explode today at four P
. M
.?"

"Yes," Willy said, keeping his voice gentle and superior in the quiet room.

"Is it somewhere at Los Angeles International Airport?"

"Yes, it is."

They looked at the polygraph operator. "These are nine
-
plus-range responses," she said. "Very truthful."

"Obviously you will try to find this device," Willy said. "That is your job. My plane is at LAX. You undoubtedly will search it first, but you will be wasting your time. In the meantime, I want my jet provisioned and fueled. My pilots must supervise this operation. I will take off at exactly three P
. M
. Once I have cleared American airspace, I will radio you the position and the instructions for disarming the nuclear device. That should give you adequate time to disarm it before it explodes at four o'clock. You should now ask me if I intend to live up to this agreement. Your machine will verify my response."

There was an awkward silence in the room.

"Ask him," Alan said.

"If we let you go, do you intend to keep your end of the bargain?" Cameron asked.

Everyone except for Willy turned to look at the polygraph operator.

"Yes," Willy said. "I would never break my word." The Triad leader was rewarded with a nod from Helen Staggs. "You must not waste your time. I want my plane ready to depart no later than three."

"What if we put you at the airport and let the bomb, if there even is one, take you up with it?" Cameron said.

"You can pursue whatever course you choose."

Willy sat quietly and waited to see what his enemies would do. They were inferior men, and as the Master had once said, inferior men were liable to do anything.

Chapter
40.

Carter DeHaviland

Tanisha and Wheeler could not remember the name of the man who told Willard Vickers that Willy was dealing in nuclear weapons. They called Vickers in Cleveland and he gave them the name. Twenty minutes later, Carter DeHaviland showed up at the fifth-floor office in Parker Center. He had rushed over from the CIA's office on Wilshire Boulevard as soon as they'd called. Carter DeHaviland was stoop-shouldered, with wire glasses, and wore an out-of-date narrow-lapeled seersucker suit. He was an E-5 company Indian, and told them he was assigned to the Agency "Scare Book," which investigated black market nuclear ordnance from the old USSR armory, alleged to have been sold to terrorists. The hundred missing suitcase bombs were already under investigation. He listened while they filled him in, finishing by showing the results of Willy's lie detector test.

"I think this is pure bullshit," Cameron said, after the briefing was complete. "I think he's bluffing."

"I don't," DeHaviland said. "This has been a CIA front
-
burner scenario since slightly before Russian General Alexander Lebed made the charge public on 60 Minutes in September of '97."

"You mean this is true?" Cameron asked. "We can't let this guy threaten us with a nuke in a suitcase and just let him walk out of here."

"The lie detector says he's telling the truth," Wheeler reminded him. "You have any idea how much damage that bomb would do?"

"Whatta you know about lie detectors or bombs?" Cameron responded. "Besides, the polygraph isn't foolproof. It's possible to beat the box. This guy is Chinese--maybe he was in some sort of yoga trance or something. Who the hell knows?"

"That's sorta bullshit," Verba said hesitantly. "I've been giving lie tests for twenty years. They're ninety to ninety-five percent accurate. So on that scale, we've got at least a ninety percent chance Mr. Wo Lap is telling the truth."

Then Alan Hollingsworth asked a question that needed an answer. "What makes you think this suitcase bomb even exists?"

Carter DeHaviland pushed his wire-rim glasses up on his nose, trying to decide how much classified information to give them. "First," Carter said, "I think we should notify NEST immediately. That's the Nuclear Emergency Search Team. I checked before coming over. They're on a field op right now. NEST is usually on a five-hour string. They are a self-contained unit, traveling in four C-141 cargo jets. Since they're presently gathered in New Mexico for training exercises, we can probably get 'em here by two. First you have to notify the FBI, because they have lead agency authority over NEST and have to call them in. You should also immediately notify the White House that you suspect a foreign agent placed a nuclear device at the L
. A
. airport, and simultaneously, you must clear the area, notifying the police and National Guard."

"We've already informed the Governor," Verba said. "He was going to take care of the White House."

"Okay, good. The first thing you must understand is, in the intelligence community, we deal with both factual and counterfac
-
tual probabilities. Every story has a counterclaim. People don't always give you the whole truth. We assign probability quotients to casual factors to determine counterintuitive scenarios."

"Jesus, talk English, will ya?" Wheeler said.

"General Lebed made these charges initially in '97," Carter went on, "He had just been fired by Boris Yeltsin. We know the General is planning to run for President of Russia in 2000. It therefore could be considered in his best interest to embarrass President Yeltsin, and this story about a hundred missing nuclear suitcase bombs could be counterfactual disinformation."

"Go on," Cameron said.

"On the other hand, we have some independent corroboration that one hundred nuclear suitcase bombs are, in fact, missing. This came last year from a Russian Deputy Defense Minister, named Andrei Kokoshin, who confirmed everything General Lebed said. A few weeks after Kokoshin made his confirmation, he was also fired by the Russian High Command ... a bad sign, we thought, in the hallowed halls of Langley. Kokoshin's firing was as good as a confirmation. After that, the CIA started taking Lebed's claim very seriously. We know these suitcase bombs exist in theory. It's not at all difficult to reduce nuclear technology down to the size of a suitcase or a backpack."

"How destructive are these things?" Cameron asked.

"They're not Start I or Start II nuclear devices, which means they're not covered by any international arms agreements. These are much smaller NUTS units."

"They're what?" Cameron asked.

"NUTS units. It's an acronym, stands for Nuclear Utilization Targeting Strategy. It's a theory based on the idea that it will be military targets, not cities, that will be hit in a nuclear exchange. These knapsack or suitcase bombs were designed to destroy tactical targets like power plants, airports, hotels, and munitions centers. Russian paratroopers could parachute in with them and wreak havoc on hard targets behind enemy lines. To the best of our knowledge, the missing suitcase weapons were deployed to Ukraine and Georgia, just before the break-up of the Soviet Union. This is much more disturbing to us because those governments are even less stable than the Russian government, and it's quite possible that their military establishments, or individuals therein, chose to steal the bombs and sell them on the world munitions black market.

"China would be a big buyer of this kind of ordnance. Their Poly Industries in Beijing is one of the biggest brokers of Russian armaments in the world. In theory, that would make it very easy for Wo Lap Ling to purchase one or two of these devices."

The room was now totally silent. Cameron Jobe got up. His chair squeaked as it slid back. He walked to the window and looked out, his broad back to the rest of them. "You're telling me this criminal has actually put a nuclear bomb at LAX?"