Spyder Web (16 page)

Grin picked up the story. ‘I loaded your code and ran the programs. Like I said, it’s cool stuff. It was my idea to get you working in here. I could really use somebody like you to help out with all the wild research we’re going to be getting into. I figured since you and Kelsey will be working out of here anyway, maybe we could cut a deal. If it’ll help you decide, you’ll get doctoral credit for your efforts.’

Nolan threw up his hands. ‘You two are shameless!’

‘Playing you just like a Stradivarius, huh?’ Grin asked, a devilish smile flashing through his goatee.

‘Full concert and a couple of encores,’ Nolan replied. ‘Of course I’d love to work here; I’d be an idiot not to. Don’t feel bad about spilling the secret, Grin. If you hadn’t brought it up, I would have asked before we left anyway.’

‘Great. I’ve already worked up a brief for you on the system specs and our workload.’ Grin looked visibly relieved now that the lab’s labor problem had been solved. ‘When can you start?’

‘Right now. I’ve got some time before I meet with Kelsey. Why don’t you show me around?’

Following the holidays, maintenance technicians had performed a routine diagnostic check on robot 43’s mechanical and electrical systems and found nothing that would have caused the machine to take itself out of service. The robot was a reliable workhorse in the automated factory and had logged very little downtime over its entire service life. Whatever had laid it low that night had, thus far, not reoccurred.

The shipping program, which coordinated customer orders with finished products, sent the materialtransport robots scurrying about the warehouse in search of items ready to ship. The warehouse was always busy following the Christmas-New Year’s holiday, filling orders that customers scheduled for delivery after the first of the year.

Robot 43 glided down the aisleways, finally coming to a stop over the flush stainless-steel sensor pads. From above, an articulating mechanical arm reached down and grasped a small package and placed it on 43’s back. The arm retracted back to the ceiling and robot 43 rolled back into the main aisle and sped to the loading dock.

Six freight trucks sat at the opened bays, quickly being filled with electronics equipment. Though they still personally delivered and installed their large computer systems, Moy Electronics found it more cost-effective to ship smaller, user-installed components via commercial carrier.

The UPS truck at Bay 5 was nearly full when 43 stopped at the end of its run, waiting for the clerk to collect the package from its back. The shipping clerk scanned the package’s bar-coded shipping label with a wand reader. Two seconds later, her handheld computer flashed back a confirmation that this package was to be sent to the Michigan Applied Research Consortium in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Upon receiving confirmation from the dock, the computer logged the package as shipped and ordered robot 43 to return to the warehouse. The clerk took the package over to the UPS driver, who tagged it with their in-transit tracking bar code and loaded it on the truck. Within the hour, the Spyder would be processed at the UPS distribution center and loaded on the next truck to Ann Arbor.

February 11

It promised to be a good day indeed for Wu Zhusheng. From his office, he enjoyed a commanding view of Hong Kong. Freighters, junks, and tourist ships busily filled the waters with activity, like bees swarming around the great economic hive. Fortunes were made and lost each day in Hong Kong, and today Wu’s gamble had paid a great return.

Four generations of the Wu family had lived in the former Crown Colony, and in that time none had been permitted to carry a British passport. That fact hadn’t been a problem until the British lease expired. Without a British passport, Wu knew that neither he nor any member of his family could legally emigrate from Hong Kong.

Six years before, Wu had begun a quiet campaign to curry favor with the power brokers in Beijing. Unlike the West, where business relationships form and dissolve very quickly, trading relationships in Asia take years to nurture and are not hastily discarded. By the time Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule, Wu had turned the focus of his computer-manufacturing corporation eastward.

Wu’s company had blossomed during the early days of the computer revolution by manufacturing compatible components for many of the world’s most powerful mainframe computer systems. He carved his place out of the market with aggressively priced clones of existing hardware systems. When the age of personal computers dawned, he rushed into the market with systems based on the Intel architecture. Wu subsidiaries, with manufacturing plants dotting the Pacific Rim, built PCs that several computer companies sold under their own name.

Over the last few years, Wu had increased his contacts with the Chinese Communist government, signing lucrative trade agreements and offering technical assistance. He had even secretly sold technologies to China that Western governments had forbidden. The Chinese, for their part, had assured Wu that both Hong Kong and his company would be left untouched when the Crown Colony reverted to Chinese rule.

As his relationship with the Red Chinese improved, they became more open to his assistance in acquiring forbidden hardware and software from the West. High-speed supercomputers were always in demand by Beijing, and Wu had been able to supply them with older Cray and Moy computers without arousing suspicion abroad.

The Red Chinese appreciated his efforts, but both parties knew the machines he acquired were not the same state-of-the-art computers used by the United States government and her allies. The Red Chinese wanted the best, and Wu knew that their lust for technology was the key to securing his future under their rule.

The intercom phone buzzed softly on Wu’s ornate hand-carved desk. He lifted his eyes from the report that he was reading and answered.

‘Yes, Yuying?’

‘Kang Fa is here to see you,’ his secretary announced respectfully.

‘Excellent. Please show him in.’

The large black-lacquered door swung open silently as Wu’s secretary led the man in. Kang was a frequent visitor, having become Wu’s primary contact with the Red Chinese in Hong Kong. The two men met in the center ofWu’s office. Both were dressed in finely tailored business suits, crisp white shirts, and silk ties. To an uninformed observer, Kang appeared more like a Hong Kong stockbroker than a Mao-suited Communist from Beijing.

Wu bowed respectfully to his guest. ‘Kang Fa, how are you today?’

‘I am well,’ Kang replied politely. ‘And you?’

‘I am also in good health. Thank you for coming on such short notice.’

Kang sat opposite Wu in one of a pair of ornate chairs. ‘You expressed some urgency when you called. Is there a problem?’

‘There is no problem, only an opportunity. Over the years, I have provided Beijing with significant assistance in acquiring various equipment and technologies.’

‘And you have been well compensated for your efforts.’

Kang usually hid his emotions well, but the tone in his voice expressed a hint of annoyance. He had developed Wu as a resource, using the man’s access to the West to help China with its technological leap forward.

Agents such as Wu are like small children, Kang thought, always in need of constant reassurance that they are appreciated.

‘Ah, but your needs were never fully met. That is about to change.’Wu sat back comfortably in his chair, enjoying the puzzled look on Kang’s face. ‘Would Beijing be interested in the next generation of supercomputer technology, a type of machine that even the government of the United States does not yet possess?’

Kang sat forward in his chair, his calm demeanor replaced by a heightened level of enthusiasm that he knew would flatter his host. ‘Of course! How would this be possible?’

‘I recently acquired the technical designs for the new Moy Electronics supercomputer. This machine is not yet on the market, and the first units are not scheduled to ship until March. With the proper funding, I should be able to provide a comparable machine in a few months’ time.’

Kang knew well his government’s desire for the latest supercomputers, machines whose sale to China was forbidden by the United States. ‘I do not think that you will find any difficulty in financing this venture. What will you require?’

‘Here is a proposal, as well as the performance characteristics of the new machine.’Wu handed over a manila envelope. ‘The new device incorporates some rather exotic technologies that will make the reverse engineering a little more difficult.’

‘How difficult?’ Kang inquired as he picked up the proposal.

‘Nothing insurmountable,’ Wu reassured him. ‘By late spring, Beijing will be in possession of a machine unlike anything they’ve ever worked with before.’

Kang opened the envelope and thumbed through the proposal. He noticed several of the pages in the appendix were internal documents from Moy Electronics, describing the new supercomputer. This was indeed a coup for Wu.

In his previous efforts, Wu had obtained computers and software that already existed-items that he could legally purchase through his U.S. subsidiaries and secretly deliver to China. This information was different; it had been obtained directly from the source.

Wu must have an excellent contact inside Moy Electronics, Kang thought, a source that could be useful on another matter.

Kang placed the proposal into his briefcase and joined Wu for a cup of tea. The conversation turned away from business as he complimented Wu on his efforts. For his part, Wu modestly accepted the praise, hoping that he had ensured his family’s security in China’s Hong Kong.

Neville Axton watched the digital VU meters register the sound energy passing through them, checking for at least the tenth time that they were recording the conversation taking place inside Wu’s office. British Intelligence had leased a small office in an older building across from Wu’s suite. From there, they were able to mount an eavesdropping campaign against the Chinese industrialist.

Axton’s associate snapped off several photographs using a long telephoto lens. ‘Terrible shame I can’t make out what’s on those papers Wu just handed off. Those blinds half-open like that will just bugger any legibility on the enlargements.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Axton said to the photographer. ‘I think Wu has already told us what’s in those papers.’

‘Pity we can’t just arrest him, sir.’

Axton cast a withering glance at the young man. ‘Under the new Hong Kong rules, we’re the ones who should worry about being arrested. Our job here is just to watch and see if we can figure out how Wu is getting the goods on his competitors. Somebody outside Hong Kong is selling restricted technology to Wu, and that’s the bloke we’re after.’ Axton smoothed back his thinning gray hair. ‘A security leak at Moy-the Yanks aren’t going to like that one bit. I’ll bet you a bottle of single malt that Sir Daniel Long will be on the hot line to the CIA once our report reaches London.’

The photographer leaned up from his camera. ‘Well, sir, it looks like the show’s over for today.’

Axton observed the scene through a pair of field glasses, watching Kang exchange pleasantries with his smiling host. In his mind, another scene came into view, that of a young woman murdered on a dock not far from here. Lin Mei, her brother, and all the rest had been murdered by the man he was watching. It had taken him over six months to put a name and a face to the person responsible for the deaths of his agents and an innocent girl. Axton just wished this view was through the scope of a sniper’s rifle.

‘So, you finally crawled out from under your rock, you bastard,’ he whispered to himself. ‘I know who you are, Kang Fa, and I haven’t forgotten what you did to Lin Mei.’

February 18

Wu Zhusheng waited in the London hotel room, just as Kang had ordered. A week had passed since he had made his proposal to Kang, and the response from Beijing was not what he’d expected. Instead of a lucrative contract, Kang had demanded to know how the Moy computer designs had been acquired.

The interrogation had lasted for over two hours, with Kang questioning him repeatedly on the details of his arrangement with the British business consultant Ian Parnell. Once satisfied that he’d wrung out every scrap of information from him, Kang demanded an introduction to Parnell.

At 9:10, Wu answered the knock at his door. It was Kang Fa. Without a word, Kang ushered him down to the hotel lobby and into a waiting car.

Axton’s report from Hong Kong arrived just ahead of Wu’s flight, giving the watchers barely enough time to set up their surveillance, not that their first ten hours of watching Wu had produced much. According to the report, Wu’s departure from Hong Kong had been sudden and followed a meeting with the Chinese agent Kang Fa. Kang’s appearance in the lobby of the Inter-Continental caught the hotel team completely off guard. This was the only glimpse of Kang that the watchers in London would get today. By 9:20, Kang’s car had disappeared into the crowded streets of London, driven by someone who knew how to evade observation.

Kang’s car pulled up to the contemporary mixed-use high-rise nestled among the old wharf buildings and tower cranes of London’s Canary Wharf. Kang and Wu entered and took an elevator to the

twelfth floor, where they reached the office bearing the brass nameplate PARNELL ASSOCIATES.

The receptionist greeted Wu and his guest and notified Parnell of their arrival. Both men took a seat in the tastefully decorated reception area, patiently awaiting their audience with the high-priced consultant. After a few minutes, she escorted them into his office.

‘Zhusheng, it is good to see you again. I trust that there are no problems with our recent efforts on your behalf?’

Parnell stood as Kang and Wu entered, towering nearly a foot over his visitors. Wu had declined to tell him the purpose of this visit, other than that he wished to make an introduction for an associate in need of Parnell’s special consulting services. Wu was a valued client and Parnell was always willing to assist him.