PALO ALTO
Monday 10 May
Upton gave them a plane to fly back to California. Rena’s first stop was to see Kunai Sreenivansan at Ignius Corp.
The battery company had its headquarters in an old nursery in East Palo Alto, an unincorporated township across the freeway from Palo Alto and Stanford. East Palo Alto had always been poor, the place where Black people migrating from the South came after World War II, then the Vietnamese in the 1980s. Now more new residents were Latino. But East Palo Alto was still poor and predominantly Black. Sreenivansan needed land for his battery factory. He turned the greenhouses into laboratories. His office was a converted bedroom in the old house.
Sreenivansan was tall and broad shouldered and darker than Rena, but the two men could have been mistaken for countrymen, the Indian and the dark Italian. They both had thick black hair, aquiline noses and dark eyes.
The young scientist studied Rena from behind a metal desk purchased from a store that sold used office furniture. They had met only twice before, when Kim Matsuda had brought Rena around as part of the security checks on the battery companies. Rena had interviewed him at length about the company. He knew Rena was thorough and knew a good deal he didn’t reveal. There was something a little frightening, Sreenivansan thought, beneath Rena’s military bearing and unfailing politeness.
“I need a favor,” Rena said. “Tell your board you’re about to have a breakthrough.”
Sreenivansan looked surprised. “But it’s not true.”
“Then better not give them any details.”
“And if they ask questions?”
“You have a PhD,” Rena said. “I assume you know how to dissemble.”
“There are rules about what you say to boards.”
Rena knew the flow batteries were a mission for Sreenivansan—a lifelong dream from his childhood in India.
“And you’ll need to stretch them,” Rena said.
“What are you playing at?”
“Saving your company, Kunai.”
Brooks was just back from visiting the Helios CEO, Bill Stencel, when Rena returned to the FBI office.
“What’d Stencel say?” Rena asked.
“He liked the intrigue. How about Kunai?”
“He had a little trouble wrapping his scientist’s brain around the deception.”
“A man who doesn’t lie. You two should be great friends,” Brooks said.
“You ready for what’s next?”
“Most def,” she said. She was excited and nervous.
THREE DAYS LATER, THE REST OF PRESIDENT UPTON’S PLAN WENT into action. She had envisioned a way to send a signal to all of Silicon Valley and to technology companies worldwide. The rules about technology transfer and security were going to change. And they were going to use the likelihood that the battery program was compromised as the way to do it. They were going to stage raids on four prominent people in the Valley, simultaneously, for spying.
The ruthlessness of the plan surprised Brooks. She admitted to Peter after hearing it that maybe there was more to Wendy Upton than she’d thought. Behind the president’s cautious manner and cool reserve was a rebellious spirit, Randi said. She already knew Upton was quiet, stubborn, and polite, and Randi had never doubted that Upton was strong. But she had not thought the woman quite so daring. The heart of the teenage girl who forty years ago had sued the state to become an emancipated minor and raise her sister still beat inside her.
Messages had successfully been sent via CEOs about technology breakthroughs to all of the companies’ boards. With FISA court approval, the FBI had then monitored the communications of key people under suspicion to see if they communicated news of those breakthroughs to anyone—especially back to Russia or China. Now Rena and Brooks were waiting at the FBI office for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to arrive to stage the denouement. The small conference room where they had met Jazz Bhalla all those weeks earlier was now filled with agents in FBI windbreakers. Bhalla drove everyone crazy clicking a pen while they waited. The ICE teams pulled up in front of the small FBI office in separate caravans of black vehicles. Rena joined the caravan heading to Anatol Bremmer’s. And they were off.
The radio communication between the teams would be noisy by design. “Lights and sirens. Go in loud and large,” Bhalla had ordered. The caravans of SUVs were bigger than necessary, too, eight vehicles each, thirty-two in all. Drones flew over each target’s house. They wanted the public and the media to notice.
Jazz Bhalla called in first. They’d arrived at the house of Patrick Singh, the Ignius scientist they suspected might have been recruited by another country, but he wasn’t there. Every target had been given a colorful code name, largely for the media to pick up on later. Singh was Mickey Mouse. “We are executing a search warrant of the home,” Bhalla reported, on the pretext that Singh had taken work from the office home with him, which was technically a national security violation. Their orders were to make a mess of every place they searched.
Prince Omar Abbad wasn’t home either, but they had never expected him to be. A friendly judge had signed a search warrant for the house, an enormous white plaster and glass mansion that looked more like a resort hotel than a residence. But they didn’t really expect to find much. No one imagined the prince, code named Bambi, to have brought technical information home from his investment firm’s office.
Brooks was in the caravan headed to James Wei’s house. Wei had been given the code name Snow White.
Then the radio crackled. “We have a runner.” Rena didn’t know the voice.
“Lion King is heading out.”
Lion King: Anatol Bremmer.
The drone hovering over his house had apparently detected Bremmer leaving. It might mean nothing, a normal trip out. Or it could mean he’d heard they were coming.
“He in a hurry?” Agent Polansky asked from the front seat of Rena’s SUV.
“Negative,” answered the drone operator. “He’s just getting into his car. A black Tesla. But he has a satchel, maybe a go bag.”
“Track him!” Polansky snapped.
“Heading toward 280,” the drone camera operator reported. That was the main freeway near Los Altos Hills.
“Stay in touch,” Polansky said. Then he touched the driver on the shoulder and said quietly, “Go, Bill.”
They felt the pulling force of the SUV’s acceleration, and the truck listed to the right as the driver turned at speed. Rena hated SUVs. They always felt like they were going to tip over. “Heading 280 south,” the drone operator announced.
“Copy that.”
“He may be headed to Mineta?” the driver said.
“What’s that?” asked Rena.
“San Jose airport. Where the private jet terminal is,” said Polansky. “If he’s running, he’d go there.”
Would Bremmer run? Rena wondered. This elaborately staged trap was designed to find that out. They had designed the coordinated FBI and ICE raid on four prominent Valley executives with foreign ties to send a public signal. A crackdown under President Upton. A shock wave through the Valley. And a cover for the classified battery plan. President Upton was hard on espionage, not a patsy running a naive program—just in case the program was ever discovered by the press and became an issue with Congress.
Polansky radioed to the other SUVs, “It’s approximately eighteen minutes to Mineta.” He said, looking at GPS, “In ten miles, he may pull off 280 onto 880. If he does that, he’s running.”
Rena, sitting behind Polansky, tapped the agent on the shoulder. “Our SUV should break off,” he said, “and head back to Bremmer’s.”
“What?”
“It’s not him. If he’s running, he’s not in that Tesla.” Polansky swiveled his head to get a better look at Rena. “He wouldn’t make that mistake,” Rena said. “If he is running, he wouldn’t take his own car. He wouldn’t be the first out the door. And he wouldn’t head to the most obvious airport.”
Polansky grimaced.
“Is there another place he could fly out of?” Rena asked.
“San Carlos,” the driver said.
“Go there,” Rena said to Polansky. “If I’m wrong, let the rest of these cars stay with the Tesla. But send one of the SUVs back to Bremmer’s.”
Polansky pondered that a moment and then nodded to the driver. “San Carlos, Bill.” Into the radio he announced, “Skyline Team, stay with the Tesla. Skyline One is breaking off. Skyline Two, you head to Lion King’s house,” using Bremmer’s code name.
“Skyline One please repeat,” someone on the radio asked.
But Rena put his hand on the mouthpiece of Polansky’s microphone and shook his head. Then he tapped his ears to suggest they didn’t really know who might be listening.
“We’re breaking off. Engine trouble,” Polansky said. “But remaining Skyline team continue.”
The driver turned their SUV around and they headed back toward the 101. Then he got in the emergency lane on the right, lights flashing, and gunned it.
“The Tesla is turning onto 880,” the radio announced.
“Pull them over when they enter airport proper,” Polansky said.
“Copy.”
A few minutes later the radio offered the word. The occupant of the black Tesla was one of Bremmer’s employees.
It took them another fifteen minutes to make their way up the 101 to the exit for the tiny private airport in San Carlos.
“Don’t park,” Rena told the driver. “If he’s coming and sees this truck, he’ll keep on going.” Polansky nodded. “And stay out of sight,” Rena added.
Polansky, Rena, and a third agent got out and headed into the tiny terminal. It was a one-story building with a small waiting area and a single person behind a high counter. She looked stunned by the arrival of armed federal agents at her tiny terminal. This was a hobbyist’s airport used primarily by weekend pilots. A small tower building sat by itself on the field. There was a third building with a sign that said FLYING SCHOOL and two small repair hangars. Next door was a little museum about the history of private aviation. Most of the planes on the tarmac were small-engine craft, Cessnas and Beechcrafts. There were only a handful of jets that might be capable of long trips.
Polansky went to the desk and asked about flights. Rena went outside and stood at the edge of the building to watch.
About ten minutes passed. Then a Volkswagen Passat pulled in and drove through a small gate onto the little tarmac. It pulled up to a Learjet parked at the far edge of the field.
They were about to lose him.
Rena started running.
Two men got out of the Volkswagen. One of them was Anatol.
“Bremmer!” Rena yelled.
The Russian didn’t hear him.
Rena pulled a weapon, something he almost never carried but that Bhalla had authorized for him. He fired over Bremmer’s head in the direction of the Bay.
Startled, the man with Bremmer pulled a weapon of his own and squatted in a firing position that suggested careful training. He aimed his weapon at Rena.
“Stop, Anatol!” Rena yelled.
Bremmer’s bodyguard set himself.
Polansky and the second agent emerged from the small terminal building, called by the sound of Rena’s pistol. They began running toward the group.
Their anxiety, and the bodyguard’s, Rena thought, could take this sideways. He stopped, pointed his gun away from the Russians and took his finger off the trigger so Bremmer’s bodyguard could see it.
“Mr. Rena, I have a trip to London. I’m sorry I have to leave,” Bremmer said.
“Tell your man to lower the gun, Anatol.”
Bremmer said something more to the bodyguard. The bigger man didn’t move.
From behind Rena, Polansky shouted at them, “This is the FBI. Put your weapon on the ground and lie down, facedown, hands behind your heads. Do it now.”
Bremmer repeated what Polansky said, apparently in Russian. The bodyguard stood up, still holding his gun.
“Put down the weapon. Now. Get on the ground. Facedown. Do it now!” Polansky was shouting.
The bodyguard didn’t move.
Then Rena put his own gun on the ground, raised his hands, and started walking toward Bremmer.
“Drop the gun or we will fire,” Polansky shouted.
Rena kept walking toward Bremmer.
“Rena!” Polansky yelled.
Rena was close enough now that he could speak to Bremmer in a normal voice.
“Anatol, they will shoot him if he doesn’t drop his weapon. And you, too.”
Bremmer said something more in Russian and the bodyguard finally laid his pistol on the ground.
Rena could hear Polansky and the other agent slowly moving up behind him.
“This is rather unusual, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Rena? You could have just called,” Bremmer said.
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
“What was?”
“You were doing a favor for the other side. Going after Upton. By going after me. But you got caught. And then you went after me again, this time to get me off your back.”
“Are you arresting me because people said mean things about you on the Internet?”
“I’m not a policeman. I don’t arrest people. I’m just asking a question.”
“What are you really doing here?” Bremmer said.
Rena was close now, close enough that Bremmer’s bodyguard could have grabbed him and used him as a shield. The man almost certainly had another gun. Rena hadn’t meant to get so close.
“Don’t come back, Anatol.”
“What?”
“Get on that plane, and don’t come back. To the world, you are now a Russian spy, not a visionary capitalist. If you try to come back to the United States, you won’t be allowed in.”
“That’s absurd.”
“You’re not wanted here. Or your company.”
“By whom?”
“The president of the United States of America.”
That gave Bremmer something that took a moment to think about.
“And what if I refuse?”
“You can be arrested. Or you can be shot for pulling a weapon on FBI agents.”
Rena could tell the guns unnerved Bremmer, even his own bodyguard’s.
“There are laws. This is America,” Bremmer argued.
“And they give the president broad discretion.”
Bremmer paused to think.
“That is ridiculous.”
“Then stay. Have your company’s assets frozen and the firm put on a watch list. Be arrested for espionage. See what case we have. And see how your business fares after the publicity.”
“She will regret this.”
“It was her idea.”
That answer seemed to surprise Bremmer. The Russian apparently thought they’d been bluffing the other day; or that Upton would fold.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Espionage. Treason. Fraud. Trying to interfere in our elections by attacking Wendy Upton. And, also, I just don’t like you. You pick.”
“You have it wrong,” Bremmer said, but he hesitated, his mind trying to process what Rena knew and didn’t know.
“I don’t think so.”
Polansky was next to Rena now, gun still drawn, aimed at the bodyguard.
“But you shouldn’t care much, Anatol, if I don’t have all my facts straight, right? That kind of thing doesn’t matter anymore.”
Bremmer picked up his bag and began to move toward the Learjet. Rena put a hand up to keep Polansky and the other agent from stopping them.
Bremmer paused at the foot of the stairs. “You make a habit of collecting enemies, Mr. Rena, don’t you?”
“I guess I do,” Rena said.
The two Russians boarded the plane.
“I don’t like politics,” Polansky said as the Learjet lifted off. The small jet was pointed south over the bay and then banked hard left to the east. “We should have arrested that guy.”
“We didn’t have enough on him,” Rena said. “And this is what was supposed to happen.”
Inside the terminal, Polansky asked to be connected to the FAA. “I want to know where that plane lands and where the passengers are going next. And if it’s on U.S. soil, arrest them.”