Chapter 14
Black Sea
Thursday
6:25 p.m. Local Time
10:25 a.m. Eastern Time
“This isn’t like when you were a professor at MIT and Oak Ridge, feeding information through the Confucious Institute to the Harbin Deng Fong warhead assembly facility, Singang.” Sing’s sister, Xi Changying—“Ying”—was very heated with her brother. He didn’t really give a shit. He had given his twin sister many opportunities to escape, but she wouldn’t take them. Something about her personality would allow her to justify helping her brother, but nothing could overwrite the preconditioning of allegiance to the Party.
And, no matter the conversation topic, she always brought up his time at the Y-12 facility at Oak Ridge where he had worked for several years on the Life Extension Program, or LEP, for the B61-7 and B61-11 ICBM warheads. He had managed to obtain, as an American citizen, the highly coveted Q clearance with the Department of Energy. With that, he became part of the nuclear maintenance program.
He had learned all the details of how the American ICBM warhead systems were upkept, assembled, and disassembled through the LEP maintenance activities. He’d trickled classified information to his sister, who at the time was in the Chinese facility at Harbin, a little at a time in order to keep his Party handlers at the Confucious Institute happy enough to leave him in America. He could have been a Party hero. He had the access to everything they wanted. He could have returned to China and lived there as part of the Party with an upper elitist lifestyle. He could have. But he didn’t. He hadn’t. Sing didn’t want that as his endgame. He had other things in mind. He had kept the majority of the stolen classified information to himself. And, finally, when he’d been recalled to work at Harbin, he didn’t return to China. That is when he had to vanish. That was when his father had been arrested and his sister had been moved to the Northeast Nuclear Institute near Malan where a closer eye was kept on her. She had been allowed to continue working for the Party, but on less sensitive things.
“You could not do this without my help,” Changying continued. “I was always better than you at reverse design of electronics.”
“Yes, Ying, I know. Thank you for the interface device design. Very good work. I’m sure you can use that design to gain social points. And I’m certain the Russian documents I supplied you, and the Party, made you many social points.”
“They know I’m in contact with you, Singang, and that is the only reason I’m still alive,” she replied sourly. “Do you understand that? The only reason I am still alive.”
She’d been the smarter of the twins since birth. The two were in constant competition, and since she was female in China, she started off behind even though she came into the world a few minutes before him. Eleven to be precise. Having that initial gender chip against her had driven her to always be better at everything than Sing had been. Sing, himself, was brilliant and accomplished. But Ying…
He had been athletic growing up, playing baseball and mastering Wing Chun and Shaolin styles of martial arts. The mental disciplines of the martial arts also enabled him to master academic subjects such as calculus, chemistry, and nuclear physics at a very early age. Seeing her brother’s achievements drove Chingyang to do even more. She had made a point to do the same things as her brother while adding other feats and accomplishments. Her list of skills on top of Singang’s included tennis, gymnastics, the piano, chess, software development, and coding electronics. He was always in Ying’s shadow or in the midst of the stress of competing with her.
So, the twins, Sing and Ying, were always at each other’s throats. But they were still family. There was still a strange loyalty, if not sibling love, ever-present between them. Perhaps, Sing had often thought, it was an actual physical phenomenon between them. Perhaps there was some sort of quantum bond between twins. He’d read countless scientific and philosophic papers on the topic and was beginning to come to that conclusion.
“They will find you, Singang. When they do, they will kill us both,” his sister warned him.
“No, Ying. They will not.” Sing leaned back in his desk chair and looked away from the computer screen for a brief moment. Looking out the porthole of his room on the yacht he could see that the waves were subsiding and rays of yellow sunlight were peeking through the clouds. He’d noticed that his nausea was settling as well.
“Singang, I am watched much more closely because of how you left. Mother is in prison now. Do you realize this?” Ying was rightfully angry at him he agreed silently. She had always been much more attached to their mother. Singang was okay with being by himself. He hated life in China. Life in the United States had shown him a sort of freedom he had never thought possible. Then he had met Marcus Dorman and realized there was an entirely different level of freedom he had never considered. Sing longed for that type of freedom. He exhaled softly and turned his view back to the computer screen. His sister stared back at him with what could only be described as pure anger.
“I guess I didn’t know that. But it is expected.” He was a traitor to the Chinese Communist Party and had a price on his head. His sister had been in a high-level position that required a very high-level skill set and that was one of only two reasons she was still allowed to work at the institute and, for that matter, was still breathing. The other reason, of course, was the hopes of still catching Sing with her as bait. Sing wasn’t an idiot. This was why he made contact with her, to make her useful to at least keep her worth something to the CCP until he could figure out how to get her free from their grasp. He had a plan. She, herself, was the biggest obstacle to it being successful.
Their father and mother had worked in a factory near Harbin. Before the move east just after Sing had refused to return to China, their father had met an unfortunate accident. Ying was transferred to Malan and then their mother had been arrested. Sing and Ying both believed their father had been interrogated to death. That had been almost two years ago.
Now, just to communicate with each other, Sing had onetime-use burner phones with an encryption app installed on them delivered from random sources, at random locations, and random times. Sing made certain that his sister had no idea how he was accomplishing that part. Only when he contacted her could they talk. Sing, of course, knew how he was doing what he was doing and was getting good at it. He had his wealthier friends help him out with the deliveries. And the mercenaries were very good at doing things without getting caught. Atop that, he had a friend that was really good with computers.
“If they find out what I’ve done…” Ying said nervously. “Even speaking to you about this technology would get me arrested or worse.”
“They will not bother you as long as they think you will get more from me. Ying, don’t worry. Just turn on the hotspot for the phone you were just sent, connect to it, and send me that last bit of code through the darkweb link I gave you. Look in the ‘Notes’ file on the phone and you’ll find another set of Russian documents you can pass to your masters to keep them off your back for a while longer. Also, there is a decryption key for an electronic wallet. The wallet can’t be traced or hacked and it has crypto coins in it, a million dollars U.S. worth. When the time comes, if you can, use that money and get the hell out of there.”
“I am not leaving, Singang.”
“If you don’t, they will eventually imprison or kill you. You have to be ready to go and cut all ties there. I have a plan to find you once an opportunity for escape arises.”
“All you would have to do, Singang, is just tell me who you are working for and you could come home. You don’t think only the Russians and the Americans know what has happened, do you?” Ying asked. “Of course not! Our spies are just as good as theirs, or better. The Party knows there are warheads stolen and in play. And they believe you are involved somehow. If you let me tell them, we could say this was part of your deep-cover plan all along, and—”
“That wouldn’t work and you know it. I can never come home. And I never want to,” he said matter-of-factly. “I wish I could convince you to leave. I have money and resources now that you can’t imagine. And an opportune moment is swiftly approaching, Yingang. You must prepare yourself—”
“Not while Mother is still alive. I will not.”
“Mother would want you to live.”
“They’ll not let you use them.”
“They will not let me use…them…” He repeated her words, letting what she had said sink in until he comprehended her meaning. “What? The nuclear warheads?” Sing laughed.
“Yes. That is what I mean.”
“I don’t think that can be stopped at this point, big sister.”
“Little brother, you just cannot. You will kill millions!”
“Sister, you are far better at math than that to say such dumb things. I, personally, don’t plan to kill anybody. Some might die, but of their own ignorance and stupidity. And I don’t plan to use them the way you think either. There is a bigger plan at work here. A plan far bigger than even you have deciphered. You must know that I’ll do my part until it is done. Things will change soon.”
“It’s never that easy, brother.”
“Easy? It has never been easy. In fact, it has been extremely difficult. I can save you if you let me. And if you will not allow it, then so be it, sister.” Sing shook his head back and forth in disapproval and was slightly distracted by the sound of a helicopter approaching.
“You sound…crazy, Singang! Do you hear yourself?”
“You’ll see, Ying. Things will change for better…or worse…but they will change. Very, very, soon. I beg you to take the opportunity when it arises. Until then, goodbye, sister.”