by Marc Cameron
Foley leaned forward, elbows on her knees. She homed in on Richardson. “So now we come to the sensitive part of the meeting. Officer Yao will explain what he plans to do, but you must agree not to inform the First Lady beforehand. She shouldn’t be given any details other than what she already knows.”
Richardson looked to the President for guidance. It didn’t seem like his style to leave his wife in the dark. It was common knowledge among the detail that he treated her like an unofficial member of his cabinet.
“You want to ask me why,” Ryan said.
“I have to admit that I do, Mr. President,” Richardson said.
She could tell the situation was uncomfortable for him, but he looked her directly in the eye. That’s the way Jack Ryan did things, uncomfortable or not.
“Because of her oath as a physician,” he said. “First, do no harm.”
* * *
—
I don’t like it,” Jack Ryan said after everyone had gone but Foley and van Damm. He’d moved to the small study off the Oval, so he could sit back on the couch and pout. Cathy said the furniture made him slouch, which was decidedly unpresidential. He was too preoccupied to care.
Van Damm sat in the swivel chair by the small desk across from Mary Pat, who sat in the recliner that matched the couch.
“Which part don’t you like?” the chief of staff asked.
“Any of it,” Ryan said. “Not one damned bit. This Chinese minder . . . What’s his name? Tsai? His file makes him look like a Bond villain. I’m rethinking the wisdom of Cathy stepping into this.”
Neither van Damm nor Foley spoke. This was not their decision to make. Truthfully, if Jack wanted happiness at home, it wasn’t his decision, either. Cathy Ryan was a big girl, extremely competent and intelligent. She didn’t have the training for this sort of thing, but, Ryan recalled, he hadn’t, either, when he started. If she’d known half the things he’d gotten himself into as an analyst, she would have killed him herself. And she’d sure as hell call him out for hypocrisy now. She had an inkling about what Jack Junior did for a living—the kid could come back from only so many overseas trips with horrific injuries and blame them on sports. He’d most recently had his ear torn half off in western Afghanistan. She was a mother, possessed of all the intuition that went along with it. Oh, she knew, all right, though the truth of it remained unspoken, as if not saying the words out loud somehow made their son just a little safer.
Ryan groaned within himself, the kind of deep, resigned death-rattle groan when you come to grips with something you’ve known all along. The Ryans had never been a play-it-safe kind of family—and they never would be.
“Adam Yao will do his job,” Ryan said. “Mo will do hers. If there’s any intelligence to be gleaned from General Song, Cathy will get it. When she’s determined, she gets it done—whatever it is, God love her.”
37
General Song hadn’t been able to stomach Tsai Zhan when they’d met the first time, five years earlier at a retreat for senior officers at Mount Mogan near Hangzhou. Tsai was a senior operative with Department Two, the intelligence service within the military. Sometimes called a political officer, he was, in actuality, a mole hunter. He had the fertile mind of a trashy crime novelist, perceiving everyone around him to be a spy until they proved him wrong. When Song met the nasty little man, Tsai had been sent to lecture the generals about the due diligence of patriotism. His presentation turned out to be a half-day of slides depicting all the subversives he had “uncovered”—along with grisly photographs of their interrogations and eventual executions.
General Song did not countenance spies against his government, but he saw no reason to revel in their pain. One man’s spy was another man’s patriot. Some of them were incredibly brave, however misguided they happened to be. Certainly, a quick bullet behind the ear would be enough. There was no need to make a man suffer for his beliefs. And still, Song knew better than to display even a hint of his disgust.
“Oh, you disagree with my methods?” Tsai’s eyes seemed to say. “And why is that? Would that be because you have empathy for the traitor?”
Song could not help but picture the man flinging spittle when he spoke.
Men like Tsai flourished during war. In economic booms and times of relative peace, it was a little harder for them to find a niche. Fortunately for Tsai, China was a large country, with many enemies, and many people to mistrust. General Bai and he had naturally struck up a fast kinship during that first meeting. Birds of the same flock, after all.
Travel by high-ranking officials to the United States always drew scrutiny from the intelligence services. But Song knew that General Bai was behind this. Tsai was his attack dog, on loan from the ministry.
Song’s trip with his granddaughter was last-minute, which added more mystery. The fact that he and his wife had elected to have her illness treated in the United States was at once viewed as great fortune and a slap in the face of Chinese medicine. The medical establishment in Beijing complained bitterly, but no doctor wanted to be blamed for the loss of a child’s eye, especially when that child belonged to a PLA general. Even generals as out of favor as Song could make a lot of stink for a physician. They had to appear upset, but they were surely relieved the delicate operation would take place well clear of their scalpels.
Tsai Zhan showed up at the Song household unannounced, waiting at the door with the gray golf jacket he always wore instead of a suit coat hanging over his arm. He shoved the jacket toward the maid without looking at her, barking when she did not take it quickly enough for him.
The poor thing cringed, shooting a horrified look at the general, who smiled softly and gestured for her to go into the other room.
Tsai was half a head shorter than Song, with oddly long arms and slender fingers that reminded the general of a spindly shrub that had lost its leaves. His flat nose did a poor job of keeping his glasses in place, forcing him to constantly push them up with the tip of one of those stick fingers. He smiled a leathery smile when Song came to greet him in the foyer, complimenting a Ming dynasty vase like he’d read in a manners book one should always smile and compliment vases upon arrival at another person’s home.
He had not, however, done much reading about the niceties of tactful lead-up to a delicate matter.
“I am here with the full force and support of General Bai,” Tsai said tersely, standing rigid, as if he were at attention. “And, by extension, President Zhao Chengzhi, chairman of the Central Military Commission and paramount leader.”
“Of course,” Song said. “What can I do for you?”
“Am I to assume that you have chosen to go to America because you believe the care your granddaughter will receive there will be superior to that which she could receive in China?”
“That would be the obvious answer,” Song said, treading carefully. For all he knew, there was a recording device in Tsai’s pocket. “Dr. Berryhill has performed hundreds of these surgeries. It is not a matter of Chinese intellect, but of American experience. I could find no physician here with such a background in retinoblastoma. It is too great a risk.”
“The disease is only in one eye?” Tsai said, as if to imply, She has two, that gives her one to spare. What are you so worried about?
“The doctors in Beijing believe that the tumor only affects one eye,” Song said. “But they tell me they cannot be certain.”
Tsai stood still for a moment, staring, blinking, birdlike. “And you fear Chinese surgeons will take your child’s eye?”
“It is possible she will lose the eye no matter where the surgery is completed. Our goal is to save her life.”
“So you believe she is in more danger of dying here than in the United States?”
Song clenched his fists, breathing steadily to keep his wits about him. He was, after all, a trained soldier, and professional soldiers in any country had an innate avers
ion to spies.
“Again,” he said. “It is a matter of experience. Dr. Berryhill simply has more.”
“And our doctors will remain inexperienced if everyone had your bourgeois attitude.”
“It is selfish, I know,” Song said. “But I would prefer them not to learn on my granddaughter.”
“I will accompany you on this trip of yours,” Tsai said. He tapped the side of his head with a finger. “You have a great deal of important information up here that the Americans would love to access. It has been a long time since I have been to the United States, but I remember that they are very tricky.”
“By all means,” Song said, forcing a smile. “If there is nothing else, I must return to my granddaughter.”
“Is it visible?”
“What?”
“The tumor?” Tsai asked. “May I see it?”
Song bit the inside of his lip, forcing a sigh, hoping it sounded more benign than it was.
“No,” he said. “You may not. In any case, the tumor is inside the eye.”
“How interesting,” Tsai said. “I should like to hear the story of how you discovered it.”
“It is in my report requesting leave for travel,” Song said, hackles up.
“I am aware of your report,” Tsai said. “But I would like to hear the story again—when we are on the plane.”
Song retrieved the golf jacket himself, sparing his maid the discomfort. As he shut the door, he couldn’t help but think how difficult it was going to be to keep his wife from stabbing the repugnant man.
38
Originally, the plan to get inside Lucky Optical had been to cut a hole in the drywall between the abandoned meat shop and the clinic, but a check of the flimsy back door and some quick work with a penknife made damaging any property unnecessary. The optomap was connected to an in-house server via Cat-5 cable. Midas connected a small notebook computer to one of the USB ports while Ryan checked the doctor’s desk for passwords that might be written down. It turned out that they didn’t need one, and they were soon scrolling through files on the server. There were no less than three male patients named Suparman. Gavin helped cross-reference with home addresses and telephone numbers, and they were quickly able to ascertain which one was their guy. The files were JPEGs, less than a gig for each eye, and downloaded quickly to a thumb drive. Ryan and Midas were back in their own Toyota Avanza twenty minutes after they went in.
Ryan drove while Midas talked to Gavin, working through the process of building the key to override the retina-scan lock, using the thumb drive and a Raspberry Pi—in the event the images on his smartphone didn’t do the trick.
Gavin held up the small green board, not much larger than a deck of playing cards. “I love these little computers. They can do almost anything.”
“Can that fight off a couple of armed guards?” Ryan asked. “Because that’s what Ding and Adara are going to need.”
Clark’s voice came across the radio, direct and taut. “CODE BLACK. Repeat. CODE BLACK.”
Ryan and Midas both reached to check their radios, making certain they were on PTT instead of intercom mode. CODE BLACK was an order to cease all radio traffic immediately. It usually meant they were being monitored. Since the radios were encrypted, the only obvious way that could happen was for someone to get one of the handsets.
Ryan’s phone rang an instant later. It was Clark. Ryan put it on speaker and passed it to Midas so he could negotiate the Manado traffic.
“Everyone rendezvous at the Blessing Jesus statue south of the city,” Clark said. “Ding’s missing. We have to assume he’s been taken.”
“Copy,” Ryan said, his voice grim.
Midas was already looking up the best route on his phone. He pointed south and whispered, “Take this to the Ring Road. It’s a straight shot south.”
Ryan gave a quick nod showing he understood. “Taken?” He glanced down at the phone as he drove. “By who?”
“I’ve got his tracker pulled up,” Clark said. “Looks like he’s at Suparman’s main office.”
“No shit?” Midas said. “That makes no sense. How could Suparman have known we were here?”
“The visit to the game store, maybe,” Ryan mused.
“Unknown,” Clark said. “But the fact remains, he’s at Suparman HQ—or, at least, that’s where the tracker in his belt is. Adara talked to a lady from the teahouse who said she saw some men helping another man into a van. When she went to the spot, she found Taser chaff on the sidewalk.”
“The bastards tased him,” Midas said.
“Looks that way,” Clark said, his jaw clenched, brooding.
Along with their twin steel barbs, the compressed-gas Taser cartridge deployed dozens of tiny circular tags known as Anti-Felon Identifications. These AFIDs were numbered and fluoresced when hit with a UV light, helping law enforcement—and in this case, Adara—see where a Taser had been deployed.
“So,” Ryan said, his mind reeling. “We link up at the statue . . . and then . . .”
“The mission’s still the same,” Clark said. “Except we grab the tech and Ding.”
“And no dart guns on the guards,” Midas said.
“Oh,” Clark said. “Hell, no.”
39
It was a straightforward mission—a pregnant woman, two teenagers, and a man in his fifties. Soft targets. Kang could have handled the job all by himself. He brought Rose and Lily, in any case, mainly to help keep an eye on the boss. Wu Chao had insisted on coming along. The major was handy enough to have around when the rough business began, but he took no joy in the work. It was as if he felt embarrassed. Guilty. And too much guilt could make one slow. Rose and Lily certainly didn’t have that problem. They enjoyed this work as much as Kang did—a rarity in women, as Kang had come to find over the course of his career.
The Li home was a huge affair, built, like all the other houses in historic Fort Sheridan, in the 1890s of blond brick. Located on one of the quiet side streets east of Leonard Wood Avenue near the old parade ground turned park, the three-story house was nestled among great oaks and Colorado blue spruce. Conveniently for Kang and his group, it was the last on the loop, adjacent to a steep wooded slope that led directly down to the shores of Lake Michigan and a quiet nature preserve.
Kang and the others approached in the rain, under cover of darkness, in an inflatable skiff. Dressed like tourists who’d been caught in the weather rather than commandos, they beached the boat and dragged it into the underbrush at the edge of the woods. They didn’t have to worry about extreme high tides, but Lake Michigan had wind and waves, so Kang looped the bowline around a stout bush before leading the others up the tree-choked incline.
As always, he’d come well prepared for the evening’s events. He’d studied real estate floor plans of similar houses and reviewed social media accounts for the woman and her two teenagers. Li wasn’t active on social media, so Kang had to rely on a dossier put together by MSS and Central Committee operatives over the years. Li was retired military, which could be an issue when it came to violence. But the man was in the Navy and sailors prosecuted wars from far away, not nose-to-nose, the way Kang preferred. No, this one would pose no challenge whatsoever.
Chinese blood ran through Peter Li’s veins. He’d completely forgotten his heritage, his responsibility. Li worked for the Americans—making him doubly culpable in Kang’s book—less than a dog.
A spotter in the neighborhood above, out walking her bichon frise, had confirmed earlier that Li had dropped his car off at a garage in Lake Forest for some repairs. His wife had picked him up. Both children had arrived home in the late evening.
Kang and his team had to bushwhack through dense foliage, but reached the top of the hill with little trouble. A familiar warmth began to spread through his belly when the house came into view. A second-floor light was on, but it was just before dawn a
nd everyone would be in bed—the groggy time, the best time to attack.
Each member of the group was armed with an identical Beretta Storm Compact nine-millimeter pistol with a threaded barrel and suppressor. All but Wu Chao also carried a knife. The women preferred short, scalpel-like blades for close-in work, which accounted for why they often removed their clothing before they did a job. Kang’s weapon of choice was a thick beast with a slightly curved blade that resembled a stubby cutlass. He’d had it custom-made by a smith in Shanghai. The black Micarta handle was scored to help him retain his grip when it might otherwise grow slippery from the inevitable blood and gore.
Kang took his eye off the house long enough to check his team. The women were both locked in on the mission, but relaxed in the way professionals relax before doing something they know well. Wu crouched at the edge of the brush, turning his head this way and that, as if he were attacking a fortified sentry post instead of a house of soft targets. He used a night-vision monocular to scan the grounds, and then returned the device to his pocket. There was enough ambient light that flashlights or night-vision goggles were unnecessary.
Wu gave Kang a slight nod, permission to advance, though Kang had been about to move forward without it. This was his realm of expertise.
Taking a mobile phone from the pocket of his vest, Kang entered a six-digit code, accessing the security application on the Li boy’s cloned device. On Kang’s signal, the team sprinted through the blue-black darkness across the lawn to the side door—off the kitchen, stacking in teams of two on either side of the frame. Lily put her right hand on the knob, then raised her left to signal she was ready. The alarm would make an audible chirp the moment it was deactivated, alerting Li that something was amiss. They had to move quickly.
Kang, standing directly behind Lily, entered the disarm code, counted to three, and then gave her thigh a squeeze—signaling for her to go. She rolled in through the open door, careful not to let it bang against the inside wall. Kang followed tight on her heels, pistol up, raised tritium night sights glowing over the barrel of his suppressor in the dim light of the pantry. Rose filed in behind him, fluid, inaudible. Wu Chao brought up the rear, easing the door shut.