Razing Beijing: A Thriller by Sidney Elston III Page A

the living conditions at university. That
it cost only a fraction of her salary had been her principle reason for signing
the lease. Similarly, inside the bedroom were a mattress and box spring on a simple
metal frame. Her clothes she kept in a trunk, which she had hauled home and
scrubbed with disinfectant after discovering it next to the parking lot dumpster.
Even her excuse for being reclusive that evening was on loan to her from Thanatech,
and the small cherry desk beneath the laptop computer had been a birthday gift
from her parents. Frugal by nature, her current penny-pinching was not without
a specific objective. The account balance displayed on the computer screen
totaled a monetary sum, Emily hoped, that soon would allow her to smuggle her
parents to freedom.
    Events in her life had convinced Emily to believe in her
fate. Estrangement from her conservative father had grown, ironically, out of
his insistence that she learn to always question—that she use her brain to think ,
to take nothing for granted. She could recall their discussions as if they had
just taken place; See, my child, how the sun rises higher in the sky during
summer than winter? It is for the same forces of nature that your bicycle is
easy to ride. Why, do you think, does the leaf fall slower than the stone? See
how the bird can fly through the air? What allows ice to float on water? Think,
to where does the ice disappear in the subzero air of the winter? Emily
remembered how pleased he had been when she asked: From where comes the
essence, Father, for a seed to branch into the sky? And years later, to his
silent dismay: Father, is it true that others decide what I read? Finally he
would quietly shake his head and walk from the room: Why do men in Beijing
decide how everyone else is to live? Why, Father, must you be so resilient as a
mountain? They eventually grew to infuriate each other. Emily believed fate had
pre-ordained that their friction would drive them apart, allowing her the
American job she enjoyed and thus the money to free him.
    A national merit scholar equipped with a mathematics
degree, Emily had obtained a student visa to attend Stanford University’s
doctoral program in control systems theory. Her father’s prestige ensured that
the Chinese government would pay the expenses. Months into her dissertation and
ecstatic over her promising future, she was informed of Beijing’s decision to
assign her to the Ministry of Defense. Why, she asked, would she not be
permitted to choose her place of employment, as allowed even graduates with
lesser scholastic credentials? They said that she could choose her place of
employment, within the Ministry of Defense.
    At age twenty-seven, she made the decision that would
forever alter her life—a decision her father had pleaded against: Emily
renounced her Chinese citizenship. Her first subsequent visit by the State
Security officer was to inform her of the disgrace she had brought upon her
family; the second informed her of the physical risk she was exposing them to. When
she ignored the phony threats, they gave notice that both her scholarship and
stipend were being revoked. Beijing pronounced her a political dissident and
the security apparatus took steps to discourage communication with her family. Finally,
even the money her parents were sending no longer arrived.
    Struggling with part-time jobs tutoring math to high school
students, and writing software under university grants, finally she was able to
complete her dissertation. When the United States refused to grant her resident
alien status, she tried but failed to receive political asylum. Three years
later an extended student visa allowed her to earn her second doctoral degree,
this in software engineering. Graduation finally in sight, Emily began her
on-campus interviews. Her highest offer came from an investment banking firm in
New York. America had entered the grip of an energy crisis, and the Midwest
firm Thanatechnology Corporation