The Vigilant Spy

Book 4: Yuri Kirov Thriller

by Jeffrey Layton

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

Once a spy . . .  
Granted asylum by the United States, former Russian naval intelligence officer Yuri Kirov wants nothing more than to live peacefully with his adopted American family. But first the underwater technology expert must pay a price . . .
 
Yuri is drafted by the CIA. His mission: assist U.S. spies with uncovering the secret behind the People's Republic of China's new weapon system, codename SERPENT. The radical antisubmarine technology erases America's advantage in underseas warfare.
 
Amid the turmoil of escalating tension between China and Russia, Yuri's team is inserted by a spy sub onto Hainan Island in the South China Sea. The mission spirals out of control, leaving Yuri trapped with a CIA officer and a beautiful, high-ranking Chinese engineer. With PRC forces closing in and war between superpowers about to break out, there is only one avenue of escape left. That route will pit Yuri against China's full might and power . . .
 
Praise for the The Good Spy
“An explosive, high-stakes thriller that keeps you guessing.” —Leo J. Maloney
 
“The excitement never stops . . . high adventure at its very best.”—Gayle Lynds
 
“A page-turner with as much heart as brains.” —Dana Haynes
 
 “A fast-paced adventure that will take readers on a thrilling journey.” —Diana Chambers
 
“Breathless entertainment.” —Tim Tigner

Release date: May 12, 2020

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Print pages: 377

Sample

Chapter 1

The city of nine million woke as first light oozed heavenward from the Yellow Sea. A leaden stratum of vapor rich clouds hovered over the coastal metropolis of Qingdao. Drizzle smeared the windshield as the boat puttered along the one half-mile-long waterway. Its diesel exhaust lingered over the still waters of the harbor.

Along the north flank of the waterway, an immense industrial wharf protruded westward into the embayment. Workboats, barges and fishing vessels occupied assorted floating piers that connected to the dogleg-shaped wharf. At the western terminus of the waterway, an offshore breakwater split the channel, providing north and south navigational passageways to and from the adjacent bay.

Elegant, slender buildings jutted skyward twenty to thirty stories along the channel’s southern shore. Lights blinked on as hundreds of the tower residents rose to the new day.

Two men were inside the cabin of the 35-foot workboat as it approached the midpoint of the waterway known as Zhong Gang—Middle Harbour. They had patrolled the eastern half of the channel for over an hour, running back and forth, broadcasting the recall signal. The hydrophone hung three feet below the aluminum hull, suspended by a cable secured to a starboard guardrail located amidships.

“It should have surfaced by now,” said the slightly built man standing on the starboard side of the cabin. In his early thirties, he wore gray coveralls and work boots. A mop of dense black hair hung over his ears. A cigarette dangled from his left hand.

“Something’s wrong,” replied the man standing at the helm station. Like his companion, the workboat’s captain was of Central Asian lineage. He was several years older, half a head shorter, and thirty pounds heavier than his cohort. A ball cap concealed his balding scalp; a navy blue windbreaker encased his chunky torso.

The observer took another drag from the Furongwang and turned to face his collaborator. “Maybe we should boost the signal. The recorder might be buried deeper in the mud than planned.”

“Good idea. Go ahead and turn it to max.”

Both men were fluent in Mandarin, but when alone they spoke in their native tongue—an offshoot of Turkic.

The observer relocated to the nearby chart table. A laptop rested on the surface. Yusup Tunyaz fingered the keyboard. “It’s now at maximum strength,” he reported.

“Okay, I’ll make another run.” Ismail Sabir spun the steering wheel, turning the boat about.

Ten minutes went by. The boat drifted near the eastern end of the channel.

Ismail peered at the instrument panel display. “GPS says we’re over the coordinates that Talgat provided. You see anything?”

“No.”

“It should be in this area.”

“The recorder must have malfunctioned.”

“Maybe.”

Yusup crushed the spent butt in an ashtray. “What do you want to do now?”

Ismail’s brow wrinkled as he peered through the windshield. The bow pointed westward. The twin wipers were set to cycle at minimum speed. He was about to comment when he noticed a skiff speeding from the bay into the channel’s north entrance. Powered by an outboard, it carried five men, all wearing raingear, hardhats, and flotation vests. “We’ve got visitors.”

Using binoculars, Ismail watched as the skiff tied up to an enormous crane barge moored on the north side of the waterway, about two thousand feet away. The crewmen scurried up a ladder and boarded the barge. Within two minutes, a cloud of black soot spewed as a diesel generator powered up.

“Wonder where they’re going?” Yusup commented. Both men had noticed the moored marine construction equipment earlier.

“Probably some place for the port. It has all kinds of work going on around here.”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

One of the construction crew boarded a small tugboat tied up to the far side of the crane barge. After starting the engine, the operator engaged the tug’s propeller. The tug, still lashed to the barge, began to pull the crane barge away from the pier. Secured to the crane barge on the opposite side was a second steel barge. It was about the same size but with an extra four feet of freeboard.

The tug and double barge combination moved to the center of the channel near the mouth of the Middle Harbour’s northern entrance. Instead of heading westward into Jiaozhou Bay, the floating equipment stopped moving. Mammoth steel pylons—spuds—towering fifty feet high on each side of the crane barge were lowered, anchoring the barge to the bottom.

Yusup squinted. “Now what’re they doing?”

“I don’t know.” Ismail set his binocs aside and advanced the throttle, seeking a closer look.

From a hundred yards away, Yusup and Ismail observed the colossal steel truss boom on the crane barge rotate seaward from the deck. A steel bucket the size of a Ford pickup truck, its clamshell jaws wide open, hung over the water suspended by four steel cables that passed through a block at the peak of the towering derrick. The bucket plunged into the water and sank to the bottom. The generator aboard the barge blasted out a fresh exhaust plume as the crane struggled to lift the payload.

“Dammit,” muttered Ismail as the revelation registered.

The bucket rose above the water’s surface, its jaws clamped tight. The crane operator swung the boom across the deck until the bucket hovered over the companion barge. The jaws opened and twenty-four tons of bottom muck plopped into the dump barge.

“They’re dredging the harbor,” Yusup said.

“They dug it up. That’s why we can’t find it.”

“There was nothing about this in our orders.”

“I know.”

“What do we do now?”

“Let me think.”

After a five minute search on his smartphone, Ismail found the article. The port authority advertised the project on its website. The Middle Harbour was being dredged to increase water depth for deeper draft vessels to match the newly deepened Jiaozhou Bay navigation channel. That was not an unusual activity for such a sprawling enterprise as the Port of Qingdao.

However, what did not follow the norm for China’s state-owned port and harbor facility—one of the busiest in the world―was the disposal of the dredged materials from the commercial waterway. Instead of dumping the spoils offshore in deep water or reusing the sediments as fill to create new dry land, the 150,000 cubic yards of bottom mud from the Middle Harbour was allocated for an environmental mitigation project.

Mimicking projects sponsored by public ports in the United States and Western Europe, China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection funded the Port of Qingdao’s ‘Project Seagrass.’ Dredged material from the Middle Harbour formed the core of a new intertidal island located in nearby Jiaozhou Bay. When filling operations ended with a cap of clean sand, the artificial atoll would cover the area of fifteen soccer fields. Later in the year, the mound was scheduled to be planted with patches of eelgrass―Zostera marina―transplanted from donor sites. Over several years, project scientists expected the seagrass to propagate, eventually covering most shallow sections of the knoll. By providing protection for fin fish and shellfish and offering a host of nutrients and microorganisms, the underwater eelgrass forest would offer an oasis for marine life within the otherwise degraded industrial harbor.

After digesting the web article, the two men considered their options.

“It’s gone,” Yusup said as he sucked on another cigarette. “We should just go back to the marina.”

“My orders were explicit—recover the recording device at all costs.” Ismail remained at the helm.

“Talgat should have known about the dredging project.”

“I agree. But still it’s my—our problem.”

Yusup took a deep drag on the fresh Furongwang. His religion frowned on smoking, but the habit provided good cover for his work. “So,” he said, “what do you want to do?”

Ismail stepped to the navigation table. He pushed the laptop aside to view the nautical chart of Jiaozhou Bay. “The website said the disposal site is in this area.” He pointed with a finger.

Yusup said, “You think we might be able to recover it at the dump site?”

“Unlikely. That dredge bucket probably destroyed the recorder. But at least we can make a couple of runs with the hydrophone broadcasting the recall signal.” Ismail faced his companion. “By checking the dump site, Talgat won’t be able to blame us for not completing the mission.”

“Good plan. Let’s go.”

* * * *

After a thirty minute run across the bay, the workboat slowed to a crawl. Hundreds of rice paddies lined the muddy shore to the north. Southward, a sleek modern bridge dominated the skyline. One of the world’s longest bridges over open water, the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge spanned a distance greater than the width of the English Channel between Dover and Calais. Ismail and Yusup watched the depth sounder. Built into the instrument panel, the device displayed a profile of the bottom depth.

“This must be the right area,” Ismail said. “It’s definitely shallower here, just a meter and a half deep.”

“Probably exposed at low tides.”

“Drop the hydrophone overboard and let’s see if we get a response.”

“Okay.”

After passing over the shallow zone, the workboat idled; it drifted westward with the quarter knot current. Both men scanned the water around the boat, each hoping the lost recorder would magically pop up to the surface.

“I don’t see anything,” Yusup announced.

“Neither do I.”

“Are we done?”

“Let’s make one more run then we’ll go.”

“All right.”

It was a fateful decision. Had the two men from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region started their return trip after the initial pass, they would have survived. But their lifespan was now limited to seconds.

The object the boat crew searched for was buried in bottom sediments about fifty yards away. The Uyghur dissidents believed they were searching for an acoustic recording device used to spy on the Qingdao Naval Base, located just north of the Port of Qingdao’s Middle Harbour. It was a lie fed to them by their Russian handler, cover name Talgat. Unknown to Ismail and Yusup, their hydrophone was actually signaling a bomb.

Designed to resist hydrostatic seawater pressure to a depth of over three thousand feet and endure subzero freezing conditions as well as function in temperatures exceeding the boiling point of water, the weapon survived dredging. It lay in wait at the bottom of the bay.

Entombed within the excavated sediment, the audio receiver inside the warhead compartment listened for the command signal. The three feet of mud over the cylindrical steel casing degraded reception significantly. But as the workboat approached, the digital signal from the hydrophone penetrated the muck. Recognizing the acoustic command, the bomb’s electrical firing circuit triggered the detonators embedded in the concentric lenses of plastic explosive that surrounded the core. The semtex charges exploded, compressing the tennis ball sized hollow sphere of uranium-235 to the size of a grape. A microsecond later, the nuclear weapon detonated.

Chapter 2

Day 1—Wednesday

It was great to be home. Absent for over six weeks, Yuri Kirov relaxed alone on the spacious deck. Perched at the crest of the suburban hillside east of Seattle, the 5,000 square foot contemporary had a fabulous view of Lake Sammamish. Water skiers towed by high-powered runabouts blazed across the azure lake waters as the sun retreated.

Yuri took a long pull from the chilled bottle of Redhook Big Ballard IPA, his second of the afternoon. After arriving home an hour earlier, he had changed into a tank top and a pair of cargo shorts. Ray-Bans covered his slate-gray eyes and sandals encased his feet. A strapping six-footer with jet-black hair and a rugged square-jawed face, 31-year-old Yuri Ivanovich Kirov was a fine-looking man.

As Yuri reclined on the lounge chair, he luxuriated in the warmth of the sun. It was the end of August and it wouldn’t be long before the dreary rainy season returned. He tolerated the damp. Compared to the bleak winters of frozen Russia, the Puget Sound region’s wet, temperate climate was a blessing.

Yuri took a final swallow of the beer and set the bottle on the deck beside the other empty. He settled into the lounge chair’s back cushion. Utterly exhausted, all he wanted for the time being was a nap.

* * * *

“Yuri…Yuri, wake up!”

Yuri had been asleep for nearly an hour when awakened. “Hi, sweetie,” he said, addressing his lover and best friend who stood at the foot of the chair. He never tired of looking at Laura Newman.

The professional pantsuit and sheer silk blouse that Laura wore flattered her sleek five foot eight frame. A striking blend of Scandinavia and Africa, she had inherited her Swedish mother’s high cheekbones, full ripe lips, azure eyes, and russet hair. Her father’s tall willowy frame and cocoa skin, all linked to his distant Bantu ancestors, complemented Laura’s birth mother’s genes.

“How was work today?” Yuri asked.

“You haven’t heard, have you?” Laura cast a stern, anxious look. She was two years older than Yuri. Adopted as an infant, she was raised by a Caucasian couple in northern California.

“What’s going on?”

“Something’s happened in China. I heard about it on my car radio when driving home.” Laura glowered. “An explosion. Very large.”

“In Qingdao?!”

“Yes.”

“Govnó!”—shit, muttered Yuri.

“Let’s go inside. I already turned on the TV. It’s on just about every news channel.”

Yuri and Laura scrutinized the kitchen television. Tuned to a network news channel, the wall-mounted screen displayed the image of a male correspondent. He provided an update:

“We have just confirmed with a source at the Pentagon that the explosion in Qingdao, China was from a nuclear device. The detonation occurred about an hour ago. It’s Thursday morning in China at this time.

“No damage reports have been issued yet but thousands could have been killed and wounded.”

The television screen flashed to a Google Earth image that displayed a bird’s eye view of Qingdao. The correspondent continued his report. “Qingdao is a seaport city, one of the busiest in China. It was the host city for sailboat racing during the 2008 Summer Olympics.

“The location of the detonation is unknown at this time and our efforts to contact the Chinese government for comment have been fruitless. China has issued a state of emergency, shutting down all internet activity and curtailing international communications. The government also closed all Chinese stock exchanges.

“Our calls to the White House regarding the U.S. defense posture have not yet been returned. However, we have some indication of what might be happening at the Pentagon right now.”

The television switched back to a split screen with the correspondent and another individual. The retired U.S. Air Force four-star general was introduced. The news anchor said, “General, please provide our viewers with your thoughts on the dire events in China.”

“Well, it’s really too early to know what happened other than some type of nuclear device was detonated in Qingdao. The yield of the weapon . . .”

Yuri muted the television. He massaged his brow while leaning against the kitchen counter.

“This is horrible,” Laura said. “Do you think it had anything to do with the mission you were on?”

“I’m sure it did. The device planted in Qingdao was similar to what was left behind at Pearl Harbor.”

Laura looked down at the hardwood flooring. “The FBI must not have believed you.”

“I’m afraid so.”

For five days, Yuri was grilled around the clock by a squad of U.S. government representatives from the FBI, CIA and the Department of Defense. During the interrogations, Yuri warned that Russian commandos might have left a nuclear bomb in China.

Yuri walked to the refrigerator and opened the freezer compartment. He removed the bottle of Stolichnaya. After locating a shot glass in a cupboard, he poured the chilled vodka into the glass. He downed the alcohol in a single gulp.

Laura was on instant alert. Oh, no! Yuri rarely touched hard liquor, preferring beer and usually just a couple per week. She opened a cabinet and grabbed a package of crackers. She slid the container across the counter.

“Thanks,” Yuri said as he opened the packet and munched on a saltine.

Laura was familiar with the Russian ritual.

Yuri poured a second shot. He hammered it back and chewed another cracker. He made no offer for Laura to join him, knowing she did not care for vodka.

“When will Maddy and Amanda be home?” Yuri asked.

Laura glanced at her wristwatch. “Soon.”

Laura’s one-year-old daughter and her twenty-six-year-old nanny spent the afternoon at a children’s animal farm in nearby Redmond. Discreetly following the pair was a two person FBI security detail.

“Good,” Yuri said. He poured a third shot, gulped it and consumed another cracker. He returned the bottle to the refrigerator.

Laura did not comment on Yuri’s uncharacteristic action, praying it was nothing more than a consequence of stress. She recognized all of the warning signs—her ex was an abusive alcoholic.

Yuri picked up the TV remote and clicked to another channel. He turned up the volume. The comely female reporter in New York City said, “We just received cell phone video of the explosion.”

The screen switched to a fuzzy image of a classic nuclear mushroom cloud, a broiling brownish-black mass rising into the overcast sky. Shot from miles away overlooking a vast cityscape, it was not possible to determine the extent of damage.

“Oh, dear Lord,” Laura whispered.

Yuri’s stomach flip-flopped, aided by the sizzling Stoli. He managed to suppress the urge to vomit but a veil of guilt engulfed his well-being. Thousands may have been killed—and I was part of it!

Chapter 3

While Yuri returned to the same lounge chair on the deck, Laura tended to the kitchen stove. The string beans in the steam pot were almost ready. Thick salmon filets from Costco broiled inside the right-hand oven of the professional grade stainless steel gas range.

As Laura retrieved the internal container from the steamer, she heard the front door open. Amanda Graham strolled into the kitchen with Maddy riding her right hip.

“Hi, Laura,” Amanda said. A cute brunette with bangs, she was slightly overweight for her five foot four height.

Laura turned. “How was the farm?”

“Great. We had fun, didn’t we Maddy?”

Laura’s daughter beamed, her trademark dimpled cheeks in full bloom. Madelyn Grace Newman had ash blond hair, sapphire eyes and fair skin. Laura’s ex-husband was the child’s biological father, but Yuri treated Madelyn as his own—a blessing Laura cherished.

Amanda lowered Madelyn Grace to the floor where she rushed to her mother. Laura reached down and scooped up her daughter. “Hi sweetie pie. What animals did you see today?” Laura asked as she stroked Maddy’s angel soft hair.

“Goats and piggies.”

Articulate for just over a year old, Maddy already had an impressive vocabulary.

As Laura and Madelyn conversed, Amanda spotted the muted TV. A pair of talking heads jabbered silently while a looped video of the mushroom cloud played in the background.

“What happened?” Amanda asked.

“Nuclear explosion in China.”

“Oh my God!” Amanda took in the images. “Do they know how it happened?”

Laura reached for the remote and restored the sound. Amanda stepped closer to the television to hear the latest news.

Laura had just taken the salmon out of the oven when a cell phone announced its presence in the adjacent living room. The tone was distinctive—a shrill, high-pitched tone. It was the special phone the FBI gave Yuri.

Laura picked up the phone and answered. “Hello.”

“Who am I speaking to?” asked the female caller.

“You know who this is. Now who are you?”

“Ms. Newman, this is Special Agent Michaela Taylor. We met on Sunday. Please give this phone to Mr. Kirkwood. We know he’s home.” John Kirkwood was Yuri’s cover name.

“Just a minute.”

Laura stepped onto the deck; she carried the cell but had muted the caller function. Yuri was again stretched out on the lounge chair. “Yuri, there’s a call for you—on the special phone.”

“Who is it?”

“Taylor.”

“Hmmm.”

“She must be calling about China.”

“No doubt.”

Laura unmuted the phone and handed it to Yuri.

Holding the phone next to an ear, he said, “Hello, agent Taylor.”

Laura listened to the one-sided call.

“Yes, it’s all over the news.

“Tonight?

“All right. I’ll be ready.”

Yuri switched off the phone and inserted it into a pocket of his shorts.

“What does she want?”

“They want to meet with me about Qingdao. They’re sending a driver to pick me up in forty-five minutes.” Yuri stood. “I need to shower and change clothes.”

“Okay, but I have dinner ready for you now. You should eat before meeting with them.”

“Sounds good.”

Laura followed Yuri back into the house. He was steady on his feet but she could tell the alcohol had taken its toll. Dog-tired when he was finally released yesterday, Yuri was spent. The FBI had promised they would let him relax for the rest of the week before resuming the debrief.

Laura’s worry quotient spiked knowing Yuri’s delicate liaison with the American government, as well as her own predicament with the U.S. Justice Department, remained hanging in the balance.

I better make him a pot of coffee, too!

Chapter 4

The conference room was spacious, at least three times larger than the interview room Yuri Kirov occupied earlier in the week. The mahogany table could seat twenty but this evening it was just Yuri and three others. FBI Special Agent Michaela Taylor sat on his right side. In her late thirties, Taylor’s jet-black hair brushed her shoulders. The Ann Taylor pantsuit with matching jacket she wore flattered her shapely figure.

Michaela was part of a four-person team that had interrogated Yuri for nearly twenty-six hours, spread over three days. During the debrief, he was confined to a holding cell at the FBI’s field office in downtown Seattle. Prior to the Seattle questioning, the Navy had grilled him for two days at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickman.

Two additional members of the interrogation team sat on the opposite side of the table. U.S. Navy Captain Robert Clark and CIA Counterintelligence officer Steve Osberg.

Clark was in his late forties. A bit stocky for his five-foot eight height, he was not in uniform. He wore tan slacks and a short sleeved polo shirt. His straight nose, high cheekbones and round firm chin personified his image as a distinguished senior military officer, marred only by the receding hairline of his salt and pepper mane.

Osberg was the oldest in the room at fifty-six. His lush, slightly grayed blond hair, Nordic facial features, and sleek, tall frame suggested a younger man. He wore designer blue jeans with a navy-blue blazer.

Michaela checked her wristwatch: 7:09 P.M. “The conference will commence in about a minute,” she announced.

All in attendance turned toward the wall-mounted home theater sized screen at the far end of the conference table. The FBI logo filled the screen. When the logo disappeared, the view of another conference room appeared. A dozen were seated around the table in the FBI Headquarters Building in Washington, D.C. Nearest to the video camera was Supervisory Special Agent Ava Diesen—the fourth member of Yuri’s original interrogation team. In her mid-forties, the mother of three had sandy blond hair. Diesen retained her youthful form by regular jogging and, when her scheduled allowed, attending Jazzercize at a mall outlet near her Fairfax home. She had returned to the east coast the previous evening.

“Good evening,” Diesen said, addressing the Seattle contingent. She spent the next minute introducing the FBI Headquarters participants, which included the assistant FBI director and the executive assistant directors for the National Security Branch, Intelligence Branch, Science and Technology Branch, Information Technology Branch, and the Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch.

Michaela Taylor made the Seattle introductions.

With the preliminaries concluded, Ava Diesen kicked off the meeting, directing her comments to the Seattle audience. “As you all know by now, a nuclear weapon detonated in China today at the city of Qingdao. It exploded about three hours ago. The director will be meeting with the president and the National Security Council later this evening. The purpose of our meeting is to provide the director with our assessment of the event.” SSA Diesen peered directly into the video camera. “Because of Mr. Kirov’s association with the similar event that occurred in Honolulu last week, we believe there is a direct connection to what happened at Qingdao.”

Ava turned to a nearby aide and issued a request. The video screen in Seattle changed to a color aerial photograph. Yuri recognized the image. Less than a month earlier, he had conducted an underwater espionage mission for the Russian Navy at China’s Qingdao Naval Base.

Ava continued, “This is a satellite image of Qingdao recorded yesterday. The city has a population of just over nine million and is one of the world’s busiest ports. It also has…”

Yuri squirmed in his seat. I warned these people that this could happen. They didn’t believe me.

* * * *

Five thousand four hundred miles across the Pacific from Seattle and fifteen time zones ahead, the Central Military Commission of the People’s Republic of China met in a secure underground facility northeast of Beijing. It was 10:18 A.M. The CMC was responsible for the command and control of the People’s Liberation Army. The PLA was China’s armed forces, which consisted of five branches: Ground (Army) Force, Air Force, Navy, Rocket Force and Strategic Support Force.

Several hours earlier, the Commission’s assembly of military officers and government officials were whisked from their Beijing offices and residences to the bunker by a caravan of vehicles—armored Mercedes Benz sedans and Range Rover SUVs. The entire sixty-mile route from city center to the CMC’s emergency operations center was underground. For the past twenty years, the PLA constructed a 5,000-mile-long military tunnel system across the vast nation. The network allowed the PLA to transfer troops, weapons and equipment to key areas within China undetected by spy satellites and without notice by its citizens. The maze of passages and caverns, bored through rock hundreds of feet below the surface also housed most of China’s land based nuclear forces. Mobile launchers with nuclear tipped ICBMs could race to the surface launch sites in tunnels at up to sixty miles an hour.

The Commission had been in session for thirty minutes. Configured to duplicate the layout of the CMC’s war room at the Ministry of Defense headquarters building in Beijing, twenty-one individuals occupied a U-shaped table within the subterranean chamber. All but four attendees wore uniforms. A mammoth flat panel screen was mounted on a wall opposite the open end of the table. A satellite image of the northeastern coast of China filled the display.

The CMC Vice Chairman Admiral Soo Xiao stood at the lectern next to the screen. He also served as Chief of Staff of the People’s Liberation Army-Navy. At fifty-eight, Soo was the eldest in the room. He maintained a trim build that reflected regular exercise, healthy eating habits, moderate drinking and complete disdain for cigarette smoke.

Admiral Soo clicked the remote he held and a new image materialized on the screen. He turned toward the occupant at the center of the table. “Comrade President, this is a series of photos of the event. They were recorded by one of our weather satellites. The images are high altitude and wide range.” He turned back to the screen. “This photograph was recorded about ten minutes before the blast.” Soo used the laser pointer on the remote to highlight a metropolitan area along the coast of the Yellow Sea. “Qingdao is right here.” He advanced to the next image. “This one is less than a minute from the event.”

The third image appeared on the screen. A brilliant flash dominated the upper center quadrant of the photo. Gasps and mumblings erupted from the audience.

Soo said, “Obviously, this was the instant of detonation.” He moved to the next slide. The new image revealed a circular brownish black smudge near the shoreline. “This shows the debris cloud rising into the atmosphere from Jiaozhou Bay. Preliminary analysis of the blast indicates the weapon had an explosive yield of around eight kilotons of TNT—about half of the power of the Hiroshima bomb.”

Soo presented the final slide in the sequence. “Here, you can see that the wind is pushing the plume toward the southeast across the bay, toward the ocean.”

“Is it still heading out to sea?” asked China’s president. Fifty-six-year-old Chen Shen also served as Chairman of the Central Military Commission, General Secretary of the Communist Party and was the first ranked member of the Politburo Standing Committee. An inch over six feet with a husky build, Chen was the tallest in the room. He wore his profuse, jet-black hair long, hanging over his ears and brushing the collar of his suit jacket