by Marc Cameron
Ackerman kept one locked up in a safe-deposit box somewhere. Noonan had come to Jakarta with two. He kept one for insurance. Twenty-five million was supposed to guarantee fidelity. And it would, so long as the Indonesians didn’t try any funny business.
The conference was a nightmare, with the bosses eyeing him constantly for three days. He was sure they suspected something at first, but he finally realized they always looked at him like that, like they were disappointed he was such a rock star in the field of artificial intelligence that he was impossible to fire, no matter how much they didn’t like him.
Ackerman was smart, and he knew that the bosses might hang around Jakarta to hobnob after the conference wrapped up. He’d set up the meeting with the buyer in Bandung, a three-and-a-half-hour drive to the southeast nestled in the Parahyangan Mountains. Noonan told the bosses he wanted to experience a little of the mountain air before he left Indonesia. They were heading to Australia on some camel tour anyway, so they couldn’t really say much about him wanting to soak up a little culture. At least he wasn’t trying to tag along with them.
Bandung was all right, Noonan supposed. The third-largest city in Indonesia was cooler than Jakarta, and only slightly less crowded. They called it the City of Flowers or something like that. Noonan had hoped it was because of the girls, but it turned out to be because of the actual flowers. The rocky gray face of Tangkuban Perahu, an active 6,800-foot volcano, rose above the green mountains thirty kilometers to the north of the city and gave the air an odor that was far from floral.
Noonan met the buyer at a teahouse a block from his hotel. The guy looked like an Indonesian gangster—at least what Noonan thought an Indonesian gangster would look like—with dark slacks, black Oakley shades, and some kind of prison tattoo showing on the muscle of his upper arm below the short sleeve of a white linen shirt. The transaction was surprisingly simple, considering how much it would change Noonan’s life. Hand over the thumb drive, money gets transferred, Ackerman sends the activation codes. Bing, bang, boom.
It wasn’t like the movies, with any witty repartee or hoarsely whispered threat. The gangster dude just pushed back from the table and left with what he came for. Geoff Noonan had all but stumbled out of the teahouse, wrestling with the heady fact that he was now a multimillionaire. He’d walked for the better part of an hour through the teeming Bandung streets, dodging traffic and tourists who had fled the crowds of Jakarta to crowd into this new place. Stunned, that’s what Noonan was. He paid little attention to where he was going. The cacophony of horns, bike bells, and people jabbering away in a tongue he could not understand assaulted him like countless slaps coming in from every direction.
A little guy at a meat stall called out to him in a high-pitched voice, waving the piece of cardboard he used to fan the smoke away from his grill. It occurred to Noonan that he could buy any of the lowly schmucks on this street ten thousand times over. More than that. Most of these guys probably didn’t have more than their food stall and some shithole hovel somewhere. He’d always known he was smarter than everyone else. Now he was richer, too. The smug feeling vanished as soon as he saw his first policeman. He was a felon now. A thief. He needed to try to blend in.
Street vendors selling everything from chicken satay to Dutch pastries were everywhere. He’d bought a bowl of chicken porridge from a cart because the girl was pretty, and thrown it away after two bites halfway down the block. It tasted fine, but he was too queasy to eat. He kept walking, hoping that would help, deciding to check out the central square. He needed to tell his bosses he’d done something besides sit at the hotel bar. The Grand Mosque was right there, so everyone took off their shoes. The sulfur from Tangkuban Perahu volcano, mixing with the odor of other people’s feet, left him feeling bilious.
And guilty.
Somehow, Noonan had found his way back to the hotel again, and decided to drown his guilt at the bar. Then he’d seen the blue-eyed Sundanese girl—or, rather, she’d seen him. He hoped she would make him feel better.
The idea that she might be a prostitute didn’t occur to him until they got to her room and he saw the big floor-to-ceiling mirrors. His room was three floors above hers and didn’t have mirrors like that. Still, there was no mention of money. She was appropriately nervous, said she never did this sort of thing—never even went out on her own. Her girlfriend was supposed to meet her for a night on the town in the City of Flowers but never showed. That didn’t explain the room, but Noonan was beyond caring.
He pondered the situation while he kicked off his shoes. It sort of made sense: lonely girl, stood up by her friend, sees a lonely guy and hooks up. Truth be told, he had never done this kind of thing, either. He’d thought about it, a lot—tried, even—but no one ever wanted a piece of the Poison Dwarf. Until now.
The girl said her name was Betti Tamala. When the red dress came off in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror, Noonan decided she was a solid eight. It took less than a minute for him to realize that she had not only done this sort of thing before, she was extremely good at it.
* * *
—
Behind the mirror, Wu Chao of the Strategic Support Force—the cyber-, space, and electronic warfare arm of the People’s Liberation Army—stretched his neck from side to side, then pointed his chin toward the ceiling as if his collar was too tight. The four men who were packed into the tiny linen closet with all their video equipment filled it to capacity. The space was used for nothing other than this kind of lascivious work, and a dusty nastiness hung in the dank air like an illness.
The SSF consolidated most of the army’s intelligence capabilities, technical and otherwise. It was a relatively new organization, with all involved still squabbling for primacy as strata solidified. Wu had been an intelligence officer for almost two decades, coming up through the ranks working directly for PLA’s General Staff Department.
Wu Chao was a patriot. He’d not gone into intelligence work in order to leer through hidden peepholes at obscene Americans, but that was part of his job. Varied duties, his instructors at the School of International Relations had called such work. Wu was forty-three, with thinning black hair and square features that made him look like he’d been carved from a block of limestone. Those who knew him could be forgiven for assuming that he was a killer because of his chiseled look and hardened demeanor. He had, of course, taken lives. That was the way of the world. But he took no joy in it. His job was one of intelligence gathering, computer software, ones and zeros. If he had to kill, it meant something had gone horribly wrong. Kang, the man on the other side of the video camera, was an accomplished killer. Wu had known many assassins over the course of his career. Some he’d killed himself. With others, he’d shared a cup of tea. Almost all of them had some sort of redeeming quality—filial piety, patience with little children, a favorite charity.
As far as Wu could tell, the only thing redeeming about Kang was that he took good care of his teeth. Tall and fit but slightly disheveled in his dark suit, Kang stood at the far end of the little closet, looking the part of overworked businessman or harried police inspector as he stared, entranced, through the glass. Wu knew the cold reality. The man was a state-sponsored serial killer. He relished his work. If the government hadn’t found him, he would have been feeding his ugly habits on the backstreets of Shanghai. There was no doubt that Kang was intelligent, but intellect did not translate to conscience.
Conscience. Wu Chao’s belly writhed as if he’d swallowed a snake at the thought of the term. His job required horrific acts that were cruel but necessary. He had taken advantage of a widowed Japanese woman’s loneliness to infiltrate a radio station in Okinawa, befriended a Uighur child in Urumqi so that he might kill the boy’s terrorist father. He leveraged the secrets of other human beings until they’d finally broken and taken their own lives in shame. There seemed to be no bottom to the depths he would sink to for his country, but this clumsy scene on the other side
of the glass was by far the most disgusting thing his eyes had ever witnessed. It was made even worse by the fact that he’d developed feelings for Betti Tamala. She knew too much, and would have to die.
Kang would be the one to kill her, so that, at least, was a mercy.
The two Indonesian men seated between Wu and Kang—agents he’d recruited from the local police force—tore their eyes off the glass in search of direction. Both were devout Muslims, but they were men, and the conflicting emotions surely caused them no small amount of grief. In Wu’s experience, when it came to battles of piety and the flesh—a nude woman won nine times out of ten. Wu took a long, slow breath, then held up three fingers. Three more minutes. They needed plenty of video to make certain the American cooperated.
The American proved to be an athletic, if bumbling lover, using all the real estate the room provided. Along with the video equipment behind the glass, pinhole cameras in the base of the floor lamp, an overhead fire alarm, and the frame of the floral painting at the foot of the bed, they were assured a near-constant view of the American’s face, along with the more damning angles.
Wu flicked his hand when he could stand it no longer, sending Kang and the Indonesian policemen through the hidden door that entered the adjoining bathroom. Wu remained behind the mirror, letting the video roll as the scene continued to unfold.
No one, occupied as the American was occupied, was ever prepared to look up and find three strangers staring down at him. Noonan screamed, first throwing a hand over his face like a distressed woman in a movie, then grabbing Betti and attempting to pull her in front of him like a human shield. She clawed him in the face, having none of it.
“Bravo,” Wu whispered to the glass. One of the policemen grabbed her by the arm and dragged her off the mattress, leaving the naked American cowering and flushed in the middle of the tangled sheets, both hands over his groin.
Wu watched as Betti snatched up her clothes and stomped into the bathroom. A moment later she was in the closet with him, her body buzzing with indignation.
“Did you plan to leave me there with him forever?” Her English was flawless—and spoken through a clenched jaw as she reached behind her to touch the neckline of her red dress.
“Forgive me,” Wu whispered. “My superiors must be assured we have enough video.”
Betti slumped. “I know this,” she said. “But I wish you could have used someone else.”
“As do I, my dear,” Wu said. “But there was no time. I had to have someone I could trust.”
She cocked her head slightly, raising a beautifully sculpted brow. “Why did you really wait so long?”
“I was deciding whether or not to kill him,” Wu said honestly.
“You are not?” Betti gave a disappointed pout that sent a chill through Wu’s veins. “It pierces my heart to think you would let a man live after witnessing him do that to me.”
She was beautiful, and tender, but there was a streak of madness in her. He’d noticed it from the beginning. It was one of the principal traits that attracted him to her.
He gave a noncommittal shrug. “We must be certain the software is genuine.”
She leaned forward until the tip of her nose almost touched the glass. “He is a fool to carry such technology with him when he travels.”
Wu resisted the urge to touch her thigh, keeping his eyes glued to the image of the weeping man on the other side of the glass.
“We believe he intends to sell it,” Wu said.
Betti’s exquisite brows shot skyward again, as if she’d never considered such a thing. “What if he has done so already?”
Wu shared those same concerns. Earlier that day, his men had lost track of the American for a half-hour. But he’d been the same sad sack when they had finally located him again, wandering the streets a few blocks away. A man who had completed the sale of such a valuable item would surely celebrate. Wu nodded toward the sobbing lump on the other side of the glass and adjusted the volume so they could better hear what was being said. Noonan pointed upward, toward his room, and assured the two Indonesian policemen that what they wanted was locked away in his safe. He would be happy to take them to it if they could just leave his wife and father-in-law out of this mess. No reason to get them involved. Pleeease. The man sounded like an over-revved motorbike—of the smallish variety.
“But you are going to kill him?” Betti mused, almost to herself. Her lips brushed the glass as she spoke. “Eventually?”
“Yes,” Wu said. “Of course. His flight is not until tomorrow night. We have some time.”
She turned to face him, her lips pursed in a tremulous pout. “It saddens me that you would trade my virtue for a computer thumb drive.”
“I mean you no offense, my dear,” Wu said. “But your virtue was long since—”
She pressed a finger to his lips.
“You are supposed to say, ‘Yes, but this is no ordinary thumb drive.’”
Wu merely shrugged. Betti was correct. He doubted if the American even knew the value of what he had. This was no ordinary gaming software. Wu kept the rest to himself, though it didn’t matter what the girl knew. Kang would kill her before the night was over—someplace private, away from the hotel, and Noonan. His death would come later, also away from here, and after Wu was certain Calliope was in his hands.
2
Domingo “Ding” Chavez rested his plastic cup of bubble tea on the concrete ledge of the pedestrian path on the Manhattan Bridge, facing west over East Broadway. Intelligence work rarely involved shooting someone in the face—though sometimes it came to that. In truth, it was ninety-eight percent monotony and two percent trying not to get shot in your own face.
Visitors to New York City tended to think of Canal Street as the epicenter of Chinatown, but the bustling restaurants and markets of East Broadway in the shadow of the bridge could have easily been parts of Beijing or Shanghai. English was a second language here—or not spoken at all.
It was warm for May. Cherry trees were shedding the last of their blossoms just a few blocks away, but here, the odor of fish and overripe fruit mingled with the stench of garbage and gas fumes drifted upward, making Chavez thankful for the aromatic tea.
A leather messenger bag hung from a strap over his shoulder. He held his cell phone in his free hand. Six moving dots were superimposed on the screen—a COP, or common operating picture, of the two rabbits and four members of his team.
Jack Ryan, Jr.’s voice buzzed in the tiny, flesh-colored bud in Chavez’s ear.
“Adara, you got two white dudes tracking you, fifty feet off your six. Gray sweatshirt. Dark blue hoodie.”
“Gotcha,” Adara Sherman said, steering clear of professional-sounding words like copy or affirmative over the radio so as not to arouse the suspicions of passersby—if such a thing was even possible in New York City.
Chavez shot a glance at John Clark, who stood beside him, looking over the rail, holding a cup of coffee. Plain coffee. No rubbery tapioca globs. Clark gave him an it’s-your-show shrug.
Chavez took a sip of tea. Knock it off, guys, he thought. You’re makin’ me look bad. He watched a lady on the street below wait for her dog to take a dump and then, instead of picking it up, spend two minutes trying to kick the turds into the street without getting any on her shoe. “People are strange when they don’t know they’re being watched.”
“You’re half right,” Clark said. “People are just strange. Period.” He took a deep breath, blowing it out hard the way every older man Chavez had ever met did when remembering a particular story. “I once watched two Vietcong for five full minutes while they took a smoke break less than five feet in front of my hide. I could have reached out and touched their Ho Chi Minh sandals.” Clark breathed out hard again, settling the memory. “I’d been in country long enough I could understand a little of what they were saying. It took me a minute, but I rea
lized these two guys were telling jokes. Funny, but I never thought of them joking with each other, laughing about the same sort of dirty stuff we laughed at . . .”
“What happened?” Chavez asked, regretting the words as soon as they left his lips. He was a soldier. He knew better.
“War happened,” Clark said simply. “And that’s no laughing matter.”
Even after two decades of working with John Clark, and being married to his daughter, the dude could still send a chill up Chavez’s spine. At the same time, though he was pushing fifty years old, Ding couldn’t help but think he wanted to be John Clark when he grew up.
Ryan’s voice broke squelch on the radio again.
“They’re giving you the stink eye,” he said. “Countersurveillance team, maybe.”
Jack Ryan, Jr., was the boss’s boss’s boss’s son. Athletic and smart as anyone Chavez had ever seen, he could think on his feet and read a given situation with near lightning speed. Yeah, he’d been a bit of a rogue, known to chase tail when he should have been focusing on, well, just about anything else. Hell, he’d been all but fired twice—grounded for sure, stuck behind a desk—and that was as good as being fired once you’d tasted fieldwork. Ding and Clark had both vouched for him—and he’d stepped up. All signs indicated he’d finally matured to match his intellect.
And now he was seeing bogeymen.
There wasn’t any countersurveillance team. Chavez knew it. He’d set up the operation.
Ding enjoyed putting together training, but he missed pounding the pavement, acting several different parts, masking his hunter/killer persona so he could blend in on the street and not look too aggressive. There were few joys in life better than bringing justice to the bad guys—putting warheads on foreheads, they called it. As much fun as it was standing around drinking bubble tea with his father-in-law, he missed being out there with his team.