INVASION USA (Book 2) - The Battle For New York by T I WADE

He even worked for Intel, cleaning floors for a year until he got a new job with Apple. With Apple, he became a sales agent for Zedong Electronics.
    Until 1998, he had cleaned floors and downloaded plans from computers belonging to directors, designers, and scientists. After 1998, he wore a suit, used his knowledge, and sold several firms on producing everything they needed to be made in China—the whole product from computer chips to cell phones. He was the one who got the contract for everything Apple was about to design to be made by Zedong Electronics in China “I never thought that it was for anything bad,” added Lee, over his second cup of tea.
    They glanced at the screen. The Earth was still there, still very dark, and the center of the planet had moved an inch closer to the middle of the screen. If it had been daylight, they would have been able to make out Salt Lake City’s position faintly in the bottom right corner.
    “I never thought for a second that something bad was going to come from all our work and selling for Zedong Electronics. The Russians were stealing technology from you. America was blind to it all. America was trying to steal technology from the Japanese and when we came out with the first parts, I’m sure the Japanese then tried to steal it from us. Even a few American spies went over to China. I met a couple of them, and unbeknownst to them, they tried to steal their own technology back!”
    “It was nothing new, just a copy of what was stolen, and a cheaper price that nobody could refuse. For years I tried to understand the logic of selling parts at cost or even below cost, but once they started making whole units, the profits must have risen quickly. Zedong Electronics must have lost billions of dollars in the first couple of decades and then got it all back and a lot more by the third decade. It was genius, I thought. The only bank that could have loaned them enough for those two decades would have been the Chinese government—or another country’s government, like Russia or America—nobody else was big enough.”
    “Why did you end up here?” asked Carlos. “There’s nothing to steal from here, not from this observatory anyway.”
    “I think that after Microsoft, Acer, Intel, Nokia and Apple, and all the information I had gathered, I was relocated to a place that would hide me from the people in Silicon Valley. I think they were scared that employees from those different companies would remember me and put two and two together. I was getting old, my daughter was about to go to university, and my assistance was not necessary any more. I was a liability to them,” Lee replied bluntly.
    “You were paid for all this information?” Carlos asked.
    “Yes, 1,000 dollars for each contract, and I got paid 63 times in 25 years. Then they told me to come here, they paid for my little house in Salt Lake, purchased our small dry cleaners shop in Holladay for my wife, and told me to sweep floors up here and disappear until they contacted me again.”
    “How did they contact you?” was Carlos’ next question.
    “Either through a satellite phone we were issued in late 1999, or here by satellite communication.”
    “Can you find the satellites they used to contact you from here?” Carlos asked.
    “Yes. There were three Chinese satellites that belonged solely to a subsidiary company of Zedong Electronics in Shanghai. All the other Chinese equipment is, or was, controlled by the Chinese government. They must have forgotten that I had enough knowledge to trace their contacts back to the source. I was only contacted here once, then I assume I was forgotten until last week when it was time to terminate me and my family. They often checked to make sure I was cleaning floors here and that I was living in my house, and that my wife and I were happy. The last time I was contacted was a year ago.”
    “Where did they contact you from, Shanghai?” Carlos wanted to know.
    “No, from their