Razing Beijing: A Thriller Read Online Free PDF

fateful November night in
1983 was sharp; he recalled the view through binoculars of city rooftops in Old
Achrafieh, Beirut, and the smell of the Mediterranean Sea. His clandestine
operation had begun, ironically, with his having been officially declared dead,
a young case officer among the 63 casualties of the brutal suicide attack on
the U.S. embassy in Lebanon. He had watched breathlessly as the man who had betrayed
his personal trust—Nijad Jabara, an Islamic Jihadist with American blood on his
hands—brought his Renault to a stop inside his gated residence, climbed from
the car and entered the modest stone house. McBurney himself had coordinated
the placement of the explosives inside. The muffled explosion shot fingers of
flame through every window and collapsed the roof in a cloud of debris.
    “He can’t be who you believe him to be. We killed him over
thirty years ago.”
    “And did you verify the remains?”
    McBurney resumed sorting through the photographs and didn’t
respond.
    Kosmalski said, “Mr. Jabara sure seemed like one angry
honcho before punching his own ticket. Maybe a man with a score to settle? Any
way, we know it’s him on the videotape.”
    “How do you know for certain?”
    “Well, the bastard took two good men along to meet his
seventy virgins, but he forgot to bring a few of his fingers, his head, and
other assorted DNA material.”
    McBurney recalled the accounts of the final seconds of
assault on the Holocaust Memorial. Tossing out their spent RPG tubes, two
terrorists followed immediately by a third burst from the rear of their van on
motorcycles. The first, tandem pair escaped after taking off in the direction
of the Mall. The solo biker raced up the narrow lane between stalled traffic
toward the intersection of Jefferson and 14 th —where a police officer
stood taking aim. The motorcyclist tried to stop, fell sideways, and bounced
between vehicles before sliding to a halt. A brief wrestling match involving
the officer, the terrorist, and an angry motorist ended abruptly when the
terrorist detonated his final avenue of escape. All three men vanished in a
violent burst of flying body parts.
    McBurney referred Kosmalski to the curious presence of a
Caucasian male in one of the photographs. “This guy near the van seems a little
casual about things, doesn’t he?”
    Kosmalski studied McBurney’s face for a moment. “The time
and sequence of the images are a little deceiving. But yeah, he’s probably not
just some pedestrian happening by.”
    “Where’s the driver of the van?”
    Kosmalski cleared his throat. “We’re using a variety of
methods in order to locate him as a witness.”
    “Do these murders inside have something to do with the
Holocaust attack?”
    “We believe they do.”
    “And so, you hauled me in here—”
    “To rub your nose in the FBI clean-up of your costly
operational failure? Not entirely.”
    McBurney dropped the photos on the seat between him and Kosmalski.
“Then besides maybe a pound of flesh, just what is it you want from me? I’m the
chief of East Asia Division. The Middle East has not been my purview for quite
a few years.”
    “Your Mr. Jabara had a friend named Mohammad Ahmadi.”
    Staring outside through the reflection of his own scowl,
McBurney did not have to struggle over this name, either. Mohammad Reza Ahmadi
had been working for Iranian intelligence and was assigned to advise the
fledgling Lebanese resistance during the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon—a
man known to be skilled in the art of designing bloody attacks. He recalled his
last meeting with both Ahmadi and Jabara over lunch inside a Beirut café some
thirty years ago. “What little I remember isn’t going to help you track him
down.”
    “No need. For the past two years he’s been working at the
Iranian consulate as deputy charge d’affaires, among other things, apparently. We’ve
actually been becoming well acquainted with Mr. Ahmadi.”
    McBurney was aware of the