by Joe Goldberg
He was a professional.
It had been three years since his Colonel summoned Captain Zhen Jingping to his office for the brief meeting that would change the purpose of his life. He worked in the Second Department of the PLA General Staff Headquarters, the Military Intelligence Department, the MID. When Captain Zhen entered the office, his Colonel left, closing the door behind him. Zhen stood rigid at attention in front of a man sitting at the Colonel’s desk.
“I am Deputy Minister Chen,” he announced. “Your superiors have nominated you to lead a special assignment for the Ministry.”
“I am gratified by their confidence.” Zhen kept his eyes focused on the wall above the man’s head.
“As a result of the new National Intelligence Law, an initiative has been approved by the Standing Committee of the State Council for the creation, by the Ministry of State Security, of a capability to exert our foreign policy in a more strategic fashion.”
“I am glad to hear that, sir,” Zhen kept his breathing steady.
“It will be designated Bureau X within the Ministry of State Security. Only a select number of the highest officials of the government know of the existence of Bureau X,” Chen started cryptically. “You are interested?”
“Interested, sir?
“In creating and leading Bureau X,” Chen said as if it was obvious what he was asking.
“Yes, Minister,” Zhen said sharply.
“Then you are reassigned.”
“Thank you.”
Chen stood and moved in front of the man. He gave the soldier a close examination.
“You are to assemble the most qualified officers to track and remove individuals overseas who stand in opposition to our policies. They should be eliminated with no attribution to the Mainland. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
After the meeting with the mysterious Deputy Minister Chen, Captain Zhen Jinping of the PLA vanished. He became Li Chu, the leader of a new covert assassination team approved at the highest levels of the government. Bureau X was born.
Bureau X went operational six months later, adopting the codename Dragon Fire. Li Chu implemented a kidnap and kill strategy. Death would appear as accidental—a fall, an overdose, an accident. Dragon Fire operated without incident and one hundred percent effectiveness for over a year, clearing away regional detractors of China’s South China Sea expansion military.
Then nine months ago, two of his men were captured and exposed publicly in Hong Kong. What made the exposure devastating were the videos and internet postings showing his team confessing their actions. The social media posts and videos were disastrous.
When Li Chu showed Deputy Minister Chen the black card with the red pitchfork he found in Hong Kong, where his men were seized, Chen’s body went stiff.
“Wode ma ya! Oh, my mother! The Spy Devils are the cause of this?” he said in a low, anxious voice.
“The Spy Devils,” Li Chu repeated.
Then he regained his focus.
“Yes, but they will not find us.”
“They already have found you” Chen shook his head and sighed. “This is very disconcerting.”
Chen shook his head in doubt and said in a whisper, “The Spy Devils.”
The same thing happened twice in Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and again in Hong Kong. Now in Taiwan. Each time, a flood of videos, tweets, and posts on social media followed a few days after the capture.
“I am to relay that the Standing Committee is dissatisfied with your recent failures,” Deputy Minister Chen told Li Chu after the last incident in Hong Kong. “They are being queried by uninformed Politburo members about your existence. It is the same with the letters from foreign governments and the United Nations. So far, we have denied everything.”
“I pledge that it will not happen again. I will find these Spy Devils.”
His steps echoed when he reached a steel cell door a quarter of the way down the corridor on the left side. Next to the door, an electronic keypad glowed lime-green. When Li Chu pushed several numbers, metallic clicks of the unlocking cylinders were followed by a long buzz. The door released and opened a few inches into the hall.
When the two captured Dragon Fire team members saw Li Chu walk into their cramped cell, they jumped to their feet and stood at attention in the narrow space between the two bunks placed along the walls. The eight-feet-wide and ten-feet-deep cell was windowless. A single bright safety light was attached flush to the ceiling. A metal toilet and sink were behind the men between the bunks on the far wall.
Li Chu looked from one man to the other, then back again, communicating with a slight nodding motion of his head as he took a step closer. They wore baggy blue short-sleeved pullover tops, elastic-waist blue pants, and slippers.
He noted the feeling of the acid growing in his stomach with both a mix of aggravation—for feeling anything—and comfort. These were men he had handpicked. He trained with them and executed dozens of successful active measures with them. He led, and they followed. Good men. Strong and courageous men dedicated to doing what needed to be done for the future of their country.
Now, they were as useless as a spent brass shell casing.
Li Chu saw the expression of confidence and pride in the Dragon Fire men’s faces, which were now known to every intelligence and security organization. What he was about to do was not totally their fault—not totally. It was the fault of the Spy Devils.
Li Chu turned to his left. Bai stood as tall and powerful as always, despite deep purple-yellow bruises and swelling that ran along his jaw. His lips were split and purple. When Li Chu was ordered to create the team, he immediately pulled Bai out of his counterespionage position in the Beijing State Security Bureau. Now, it was over.
“What can you tell me of Bridger?” Li Chu asked.
“Very little, I am afraid. Blonde hair and tattoos,” Bai said between clenched teeth as saliva rolled from the corners of his mouth.
Li Chu looked at the other man, who had a large bandage on his shoulder. His arm was in a sling.
“You, Peng?”
Trying to stand at attention, Peng nervously answered, “I do not remember much. They used gas. And shot me.”
Li Chu nodded. Without any external signs of emotion, he reached toward the small of his back and pulled out a suppressed Taiwan T75 pistol. Without hesitation, he aimed and shot Peng in his chest four times. Peng fell back against his bed, bounced off the wall, and landed sprawled across the bed. Li Chu aimed and shot the already dead Bureau X man in the back of his head, sending much of its contents onto the wall.
Li Chu was pleased to see his friend Bai was still standing at attention. Li Chu raised the weapon and shot his friend between his eyes. Bai fell back as a rooster tail of blood exploded onto the bed behind him. He shot Bai three more times in the chest before he shut and locked the cell door. As he stepped out of the building into the narrow alcove, something in the air triggered a childhood memory. He stopped for a moment.
Cherry blossoms.
It was years ago. Li Chu recalled his father taking a very young boy to the orchards outside a village. The boy held the man’s rock rough hands as they strolled between the rows admiring the blooming cherry blossoms. The petals would float down on him like rain. He caught as many as he could, hoping a few would keep their subtle scent for at least a few more days. None did. They turned brown and dissolved in his hands.
A car horn honking in the distance broke into his thoughts. He shook off the memory to discover he was standing by the door of his car.
He did not mourn his team members. The risk of capture, torture, and death was a part of the risk of being an assassin. He did not feel sorry for himself. He chose to lead the team, and until the Spy Devils arrived, they were a strong arm of China’s foreign policy.
He felt anger.
He would not answer the call from Chen demanding a status update on the mission. Li Chu would not be recalled to Beijing, where he would
be jailed, or end up killed by a firing squad. How ironic, he thought, that he only had one mission now.
Find the Devil and kill him.
8
The Deal With China
Belgrade, Serbia
Bridger stood in a circular observation deck built into the rampart of the massive Belgrade Fortress. Located at the bottom of the Big Staircase, it provided a scenic view situated high above the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers.
It was a beautiful April day in Belgrade. Everything around him reminded Bridger of the year of his childhood when his mother was the CIA’s Deputy Chief of Station. He couldn’t remember if it was before they moved to Berlin or after, but he was pretty sure he was around nine years old.
When he received the notification to head to Serbia, Bridger transmitted a secure text to the rest of the Spy Devils. Travel and lodging were immediately arranged by companies within Bridger’s global Spy Devils support network. New safehouses would be waiting supplied with a cache of Spy Devils specific gear. Computers. Communications. Weapons. Devilbots.
He was waiting to meet his friend in the Serbian Intelligence Agency, the BIA. Right on time, he saw Goran walking toward him along the broad stone terrace.
“Bridger,” he said with a smile and handshake. “It has been too long, and you are looking too thin, but well.”
“Thanks, Goran.” Bridger returned the handshake. “You look like a bureaucrat now.”
“I run a department now. I get into the field, just to remind all the youngsters who they are working for.”
Goran was a little older than Bridger, putting him in closer to fifty. Despite the receding dark hair on top, he was a handsome man with bright eyes and a friendly smile. He wore a dark blue tailored suit. A blue shirt open at the collar. He ran the counter-intelligence section of the Bezbednosno-informativna agencija, known as the BIA—The State Security Service of Serbia.
Charging a reasonable rate at the low end of the scale for a dishonest government official, Goran had proven useful to Bridger. He was corrupt, but Bridger appreciated Goran was less corrupt than many others on his payroll.
Bridger and Goran had teamed up a few years ago when the Spy Devils were on an operation to curtail the flow of illegal Balkan arms trafficking. Bridger made a deal with the largest private arms merchant, Serge Taube. He agreed to eliminate his competition in exchange for him accepting U.S. and U.N. sanctions afterward.
It worked. The Spy Devils exposed and shuttered a half-dozen dealers and their networks. Many others decided to change businesses and disappear.
Serge lived up to his end of the deal—except ignoring the sanctions. Bridger knew he wouldn’t. He didn’t blame him.
“Goran. My team is watching your team watching us. And I am sure your team doesn’t know that. So let’s back them off and talk.”
Goran paused, smiled a toothy white smile, and flicked his hand in the air. A half-dozen people dressed as tourists moved away.
Bridger leaned on the cool stones. He looked out over the rivers.
“You are having issues with Serge?”
“Serge?” Goran folded his arms and leaned against the stone wall. “That is why you are here? Serge?” Goran looked at him. Bridger didn’t answer. “We are always having issues with Serge.” Goran sighed.
“Recently?” Bridger asked.
Goran kept his gaze on Bridger, who was looking out over the rivers.
“Ah. I did not think you were here to tell war stories. You are here about the deal with China,” Goran said.
“I might be here about the deal with China. Tell me about it,” Bridger said without answering directly.
“To put it simply, our intelligence says Serge is about to sign an agreement worth maybe five-hundred million dollars, maybe a billion when all the shipments and equity are exchanged.”
“Wow,” Bridger whistled low, “that is a big one. Between the Chinese and Serbia?
“It is more complicated than that, Bridger. China and Serbia are good brothers, partners, friends, and comrades. An ‘unbreakable partnership,’ our president said. Of course, he would say that. Serge has the full backing of the president—the Chinese met his price. Serbia needs China. They are everywhere. China’s investments and trading are running the business in our country. Telecommunications. Railways. Medical—”
“So, what are they buying?”
“Small arms ammunition, heavy artillery ammunition, sniper rifles, demolition equipment, mortars, antiaircraft guns, a few helicopters, and a fucking mini-submarine. A submarine! What is Serbia going to do with a submarine? We are a land-locked country. But that is the small stuff. It is the Ukrainian part that makes it big and bigger.”
“What about Ukraine? What’s the connection?” Bridger asked as he watched three kids sprint too fast down the Big Staircase's long stone steps. A man and woman frantically followed.
“Ukraine? Ukraine is not so simple. China has rushed in to fill the economic vacuum after Russia invaded the Donbass. China has strengthened its connections in Ukraine. Billions are being invested in infrastructure as normal economic cooperation under the cover of China’s Balkan Silk Road Initiative. The Oligarch elite is secretly selling large portions of the military industry business to the Chinese. Helicopter and jet engines.”
“I know some of them. The oligarchs never miss an opportunity to make some money. But no one cares?”
“I care,” Goran shot back, then recovered. “Sure, there is the press and whistleblowers. You know who gets arrested? The whistleblowers.”
“And there is nothing you can do about it?”
“That is the situation. Why? You have a way to do something?”
Bridger looked at Goran and smiled.
“Maybe.”
9
The Old Timers and The New Kids
Kirkwood Headquarters
Peter Schaeffer’s eyebrows raised as he checked the caller ID. He picked up the receiver of his desk phone.
“Hello,” Peter said.
“Pe-ter?” The woman’s voice sounded tired.
It took a few seconds to recognize it as Marilyn, the administrative assistant to his boss, Tom MacBride, the Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy, Kirkwood International Industries.
“Yes? Marilyn?” Peter asked.
“There is a meeting. In the boardroom. In one hour. They want you there.”
“Who—”
“Please hurry.” She hung up, cutting off his next questions.
Peter replaced the receiver, then immediately picked it up and punched a button.
“What’s up?” the female voice of Peter’s chief researcher asked.
“Anything in the news this morning I should know about?” he asked as he rested his elbows on his desk.
“Nothing unusual,” she said.
Peter was silent for a moment.
“How about on MacLean?”
The death of Kirkwood’s CFO earlier in the week shook employees across Kirkwood. Tears, hushed conversations, and memorial emails had filled the days since.
Peter felt terrible, but not horrible, like some others. That just wasn’t his way. He knew George MacLean and considered him a decent guy for a corporate executive. Nice. Appreciated effort. Big personality. Bigger waistline. He was dead, and it didn’t impact Peter one way or the other.
“There are the usual follow-up stories, but no new details,” the voice said.
An hour later, Peter stepped out of the elevator onto the tenth floor of Kirkwood headquarters located in Oak Brook, a western Chicago suburb.
At six feet tall, Peter Schaeffer, Senior Director, Corporate Intelligence and Insights, Strategy Office, Kirkwood International Industries, had a skeletal frame his mother used to call “solid.” Black, wavy hair. Frying pan dark eyes. Bushy eyebrows and a square jaw framed on an Eastern European angled nose—but he was often mistaken as someone with an Italian or Greek heritage.
Peter was a regular visitor to the executive
offices over his eleven years. Tom MacBride's office, his boss, was on this floor, as were the offices of most of the senior leadership team. All of them were clients of Peter's strategic intelligence group.
Marilyn sat behind a desk outside the office with a plaque by the door engraved with Thomas MacBride, Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer. He saw Marilyn’s red eyes and flushed skin. She kept wiping her nose with a crumpled tissue.
“Hello, Marilyn.” In her late sixties, she was older than most assistants, which meant she cared more and knew more about the company. Peter liked her. Peter noticed a pile of used tissues in the wastebasket next to her.
“How are you doing, Marilyn?”
“It is so sad.” She took another tissue from the pack on her desk.
He looked at her, then at MacBride’s empty office.
“Oh, they are in the boardroom.” She checked the small apple-shaped clock on her desk. “Go. You need to hurry.” She waved the tissue to her left. “Go right in. They are waiting.”
“Who? Can you give me a clue what this is about?” he asked.
“Whatever it is, they seem to be quite worried—they have been waiting for you. Good luck.” Her face started to turn a deeper red. Tears appeared in her eyes.
“Thanks.”
He backed away, then stood staring down the hall toward the boardroom. Her words made his warning systems spike into the red…quite worried…waiting for you.
Peter knew the tenth floor was the battleground for the civil war raging within the company. It was a war between the Old Timers and the New Kids.
Old Timers are life-long employees who love the idea of working in a traditional, built from the ground, family-run business. For them, the company has been, and always will be, a first among peers, formidable tech company that reinvents itself with world-changing technology year after year, decade after decade.