‘Which prisoner?’ Fu demanded.
‘Yin Daoming, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Shanghai.’
Tian saw Wen tense slightly at the name.
‘The Vatican?’ Chong mused softly. ‘Are they not now leaderless?’
‘Yes, and that I believe is the reason behind this provocative action. In a recorded message, Pope Leo himself revealed the plot to his cardinals — the men who are now meeting in secret to select a new leader. This message also revealed that Pope Leo secretly named Bishop Yin a cardinal and asked that he be considered by the committee as the next Pope.’
‘Incredible,’ Fu said. ‘Would they even consider selecting Yin?’
‘My information indicates he is one of the top candidates.’
‘History often acts with a keen sense of irony,’ Wen offered.
‘How so, Premier Wen?’ Fu asked.
‘I was raised in Shanghai Province, in a small village just outside the city — the same village as Yin Daoming. We attended the same school, so I knew him. I remember Yin as a good student and difficult competitor. We were not friends, but we respected each other. There was an old man in our village — a recluse who many believed could glimpse the future. One summer day, I was swimming with Yin and a group of boys in a small lake. We were racing, and Yin and I were ahead of the others when we reached the far shore. There, we encountered the old man standing in the shade of a willow by the water’s edge. We were young, perhaps twelve, and the old man was a frightening figure. He stared at us for a moment, then said, “One of you will rule, the other will lead”.’
‘Yin is in prison because he leads a dangerous cult,’ Fu said. ‘He should have been executed years ago.’
‘Perhaps,’ Chong said, ‘but martyrs are more dangerous than prisoners. And once made, they cannot be unmade. If the agents of the Vatican know where Yin is, can we not simply move him?’
‘That may not be sufficient,’ Tian answered. ‘The information we received was provided by our Italian partners. They view the appearance of Yin as a contender for the leadership of the Vatican as a threat to our mutual interests. They correctly recognize Yin as an internal matter and request that we resolve it quickly and quietly before it can negatively impact our business relationship.’
Tian did not have to elaborate. Everyone in the room knew of Beijing’s clandestine involvement in the arms and drug trade through the Ministry of State Security. The Premier considered Tian’s report and the opinions of Chong and Fu.
‘I do not like the idea of killing Yin Daoming, but I recognize the danger he poses to China. Our society is undergoing a great transformation, and in questioning their faith in the party, the people are vulnerable to subversive influences. If the agents of the Vatican succeed in taking Yin out of China, he will be far more troublesome than the Dalai Lama. If we move Yin, do you think the Vatican will continue trying to free him?’
Tian nodded. ‘They are a patient foe with a long memory. I do not see them easily abandoning the course they have chosen.’
‘We cannot permit Yin to be set free, and death seems the only way to ensure this,’ Wen decided. ‘Minister Fu, please draft the order for the execution of Yin Daoming. Minister Tian, have one of your men deliver the order to Chifeng and serve as witness that it is carried out.’
‘What of the Vatican agents?’ Tian asked.
‘I leave that investigation to you. I expect they will disperse once word of Yin’s execution is known. If any are found, they are to be killed.’
25
Kilkenny and Grin found no evidence of monitoring devices inside the cells at Chifeng Prison during their forays through the facility’s computer network. This didn’t disprove the existence of surveillance equipment — only that no such devices were tied into the network. Kilkenny’s next move would reveal if his cell was equipped with anything that operated offline.
Confident that the prison had resumed normal operations since his unscheduled arrival, Kilkenny sat cross-legged on the floor and went to work on the hems of his uniform. While sequestered in the yurt, Kilkenny had practiced unraveling the seams in the dark. At first, the task was frustratingly difficult, but he eventually got the knack of untying the knotted threads to open the seams. He had considered using strips of Velcro but decided the added thickness made the pair of smuggler pouches too obvious.
He extracted a small headset from the first pouch. Two thin wires branched out from a small foam earpiece — one bendable, the other loose. Kilkenny inserted the earpiece in his left ear, the rhythmic throb of his pulse providing the kinetic energy to power the device. He adjusted the first wire so that it wrapped around his temple to suspend a tiny heads-up display screen an inch in front of his left eye. The screen, a thin wafer of transparent plastic, was the size of a small postage stamp. Kilkenny licked the end of the second wire — the adhesive was bitter — and fixed a tiny microphone against his throat.
From the second pouch, Kilkenny retrieved a small plastic cylinder about the size of a nine-millimeter shell casing. With his thumbnail, he peeled off the top to expose the cylinder’s hollow interior. He had first learned about microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) when the consortium he worked for became involved with a start-up firm in Ann Arbor that sprang out of the engineering research labs at the University of Michigan.
Carefully packed inside the cylinder was one of the latest miracles of miniaturized electronics: the Fly. The device bore little resemblance to early prototypes, a testament to the great strides made in the young technology in just a few years. MEMS came in as many shapes and sizes as their large-scale mechanical ancestors, and the Fly was the smallest and most advanced breed of micro air vehicle (MAV).
‘Activate,’ Kilkenny whispered.
The throat mike captured the vibration of his vocal cords and transmitted the command to an object inside the cylinder. The tiny screen hanging in front of Kilkenny’s eye flickered and glowed light green, showing the interior of the cylinder. Its walls tapered forward like a tunnel toward a circular opening.
‘Take the field.’
The Fly released its hold on the sides of the cylinder and crawled through the tunnel toward the opening. It stepped onto Kilkenny’s hand looking very much like a large deerfly. Its creators even programmed in several flylike maneuvers for the sake of realism.
‘Begin search.’
The Fly lifted off from Kilkenny’s hand, its wings perfectly mimicking the stroke and tempo of its namesake in flight, buzzing as it orbited the cell. It slipped through the small ventilation grille in the wall into a filthy section of ductwork and out into the corridor. Before leaving for China, Kilkenny and Grin had loaded a crude model of the prison’s solitary-confinement wing into the Fly’s memory. Using visual clues in the corridor, the device determined where it was and began a cell-by-cell search, starting with the one next to Kilkenny’s. The Fly landed on the ceiling and panned the room with its night-vision eyes.
‘Hold image.’
The fly stopped panning. Kilkenny’s neighbor lay curled up on the floor.
‘Grid.’
The image on the eye screen divided into nine squares.
‘Enlarge A-3.’
The square in the upper right corner grew to fill the entire screen as the Fly zoomed in on the man’s face. The prisoner was young, no older than his mid-twenties.
‘Move on.’
The Fly wriggled through the vent and flew through the ductwork to the next cell. Kilkenny continued the process, discovering that the cells were either empty or occupied by men too young to be Yin Daoming.