by Mike Maden
“Oh, such a big boy. Too big for Mommy to carry much longer.” She looked at Jack. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll take you back to your hotel.”
“Oh, don’t bother. I can catch an Uber.”
“No, please. Happy to do it. Just fifteen minutes or so.”
“Okay.”
Jack sat on the comfortable couch, pulled out his cell phone, and checked for messages. He grinned when he heard Liliana fussing to get Tomasz to wash his face and brush his teeth.
A text from Gerry caught his eye. He’d sent it about an hour ago.
Everything okay over there?
Jack texted back.
All good but nothing to show for it. Heading to the coast tomorrow. Will check in after I get there.
He heard Maria, Liliana, and Tomasz at the end of the hallway. The door was open to Tomasz’s bedroom. They were praying in Polish. He wondered if it was the same prayer his folks prayed with him at bedtime when he was a little boy. He was glad he wasn’t asked to join them—he hadn’t prayed like that in years.
But then again, why would they?
They finished up about the time Jack had cleaned out his inbox. Liliana and Maria came into the living room. Jack stood.
“Something else to drink, Jack? A brandy? A vodka?”
Jack patted his stomach. “I don’t have another ounce of room in me. Dinner was fantastic. Thank you so very much for inviting me into your home and for the wonderful evening.”
Maria hugged him. “It was a pleasure meeting you as well. Take care of yourself, Jack, and I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for.”
“Maybe we will.”
“And, please, you must come by again if you’re ever in Warsaw. Our home is always open to you.”
“Tomasz says good-bye, too,” Liliana said. “He doesn’t want you to leave.”
Maria leaned in close and whispered to Jack. “I think you remind him of his father a little. Or at least, his picture.”
Jack wasn’t sure what to do with that. But he had to admit, the kid really got to him.
“I’m so sorry for his loss, Maria. But at least he has the two of you, and that makes him one fortunate young man.”
Liliana buttoned her topcoat. “Ready?”
“Yeah.”
47
BEIJING, CHINA
Chen Xing was a devoted Party man. All power came from the Party, and if one wanted power, one belonged to the Party. It wasn’t an ideological conviction; Mao’s commitment to the world Marxist revolution died with him. All that mattered now was furthering the national interests of China. If Chen had a religion, it was this.
The Great Chairman himself taught that all power flowed from the barrel of the gun, and the gun in the hand of the Party was the Ministry of State Security, where Chen flourished.
His uncle taught him the rules of the Party game as a child: “Mandarins in peasants’ jackets,” he called it. Petty egos, group consensus, deferred responsibilities. He played the game well but rose above the inevitable inefficiencies of any large bureaucracy. Unlike most Party hacks, Chen was supremely talented. Dogged efficiency and ruthless execution of his assignments within the ultrasecretive International Counterterrorism Division led to swift promotions, a division he now led. His underlings feared and admired him.
So did his superiors.
Few men or women in China had his power or influence. Some of the ones who had more of both were on the other side of the conference room door.
He’d been waiting for more than an hour. A flurry of encrypted text messages with his staff filled in a few needed details. The last was a toxicology report.
The security man held a finger to his earpiece, then nodded toward Chen but dared not look him in the eye. Chen stood and buttoned his suit coat. The guard opened the wide door leading to the conference room and Chen marched in.
* * *
—
Chen was not invited to sit, nor was he offered a bottle of water.
A hi-def color photo was displayed on the widescreen on the far side of the room. It was the close-up image of the charred remains of one of the workers killed in the NFLA attack. The blackened corpse lay on its back in the smoking ashes, its shrunken arms clawing at the air.
The men and women comprising the Lobito Working Group sat around the long mahogany table stone-faced and silent. Chen knew them all, at least by name. The room was choked with clouds of cigarette smoke, as acrid and foul as the hazy air outside the seventh-story window of the green-glass-and-steel tower.
Chen stood before them, his guts knotted. There were moments in every life that changed everything in an instant. A car crash, a winning lottery ticket, the birth of a child. Today’s meeting was one of those moments. Chen’s career hung in the balance.
So did his life.
He surveyed the room. Empty bottled waters and butt-choked ashtrays stood on the table. It had been a long meeting, apparently. The chairwoman of the Silk Road Fund sat at the head of the table. The deputy foreign minister, the CEO of the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC)—the parent company of Sino-Angola Energy—and the personal secretary of President Zhao all sat to her right. To her left were various Party and ministerial deputies from the most powerful state-owned enterprises and government bureaucracies in Beijing.
Chen did not speak. He knew his place. The picture on the screen told him why he had been summoned, as if he didn’t already know. Seventy-eight Chinese nationals slaughtered in Lobito, along with dozens more critically wounded or burned, many of whom weren’t expected to survive.
The questions regarding the Lobito-1 attack came hard and fast from around the table.
“Who is responsible for this atrocity?”
“The NFLA claimed responsibility in social media fifteen minutes after the attack.”
“Who are these bandits?”
“Unknown.”
“Where are they based?”
“Unknown.”
“How many are there?”
“Unknown.”
“How do you plan to find them?”
“I am working all available sources at the moment, and reaching out to new ones as well.”
The oil executive leaned forward, folding his liver-spotted hands.
“The NFLA also claimed credit for my nephew’s death. How did they do it?”
“One of the Novichok ‘Newcomer’ nerve agents the Russians developed.”
“Nerve agent? Like the American VX?”
“Yes, but five to ten times more powerful. Completely disrupts the connection between the brain and muscle tissues, causing, among other symptoms, cardiac arrhythmia and respiratory paralysis. Likely one of the A, B, or C variants. The D is a powder, and no powder was found.”
“How was it administered?”
“Specially treated condoms.”
“Condoms? Nonsense. His wife was infertile.”
“He had been with a woman earlier.”
“A woman? Or a whore?” The CEO of CNOOC turned beet red. Family honor was at stake.
“She was a regular visitor. Quite extraordinary, I’m told. And expensive. Fan Min’s personal security team had checked her out. She carried no weapons that evening. There was no reason to suspect her.”
“Obviously, there was,” the chairwoman said.
Chen dared not shoulder that responsibility. Even a hint of guilt would chum these shark-infested waters. He needed to proceed with extreme caution.
“That is a matter for Fan Min’s security team to evaluate, Madame Chairwoman. We are happy to assist in that evaluation.”
Chen didn’t need to mention that Fan Min’s security team was employed by Sino-Angola Energy, not the Ministry of State Security.
“How do you know it was a poisoned condom?”
“We found an unused one in her purse. Unfortunately, the technician that opened it is now in a coma.”
“You have the whore in custody?”
“We have her corpse at the morgue.”
“You killed her? That was stupid!” the oilman said.
“She was struck and killed in a hit-and-run by a cement truck thirteen minutes after she left Fan Min’s hotel, according to traffic-camera footage we secured.”
“An accident?”
“Highly unlikely.”
The deputy foreign minister interrupted. “If you have traffic-camera footage, you surely have found the truck.”
“The truck was reported stolen eighteen hours earlier. It was found three kilometers north of the city, abandoned and torched. We assume the charred corpse inside is, or was, the driver.”
The oil executive continued. “Why would this whore want to kill my nephew?”
“I doubt that she did.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Too dangerous. Had she not been killed by the truck, she would have died from the toxin that must have secreted through the condoms, according to her toxicology report.”
“You believe she used them without the knowledge they were poisonous?”
“Correct.”
“How would she acquire such murderous devices?”
“We believe someone she trusted—or feared—gave them to her. Logically, that would be her pimp.”
“Who is he?”
“An Australian national. Nothing in our databases indicates he is with any kind of foreign service.”
“He must have a criminal record.”
“Not according to local police records. He paid well for police protection, we surmise.”
“Where is he now?”
“Unknown.”
“Best guess?”
“A shallow grave. But we are checking our sources in Australia.” He turned to the PLA general on his right. “We are formally requesting assistance from Unit 61398 in order to access airline, train, and other foreign travel databases.”
The general smiled broadly and addressed the room. “The Army stands ready to help your ministry clean up this mess.”
Chen stiffened. Another challenge.
“We regret the death of the three PLA soldiers killed before the refinery assault where no security cameras were deployed. In spite of this, we believe our meager efforts will result in the swift capture of their murderers—with your generous assistance.”
The general’s eyes narrowed with Chen’s deftly struck insult. The PLA guards were, in fact, derelict in their duties.
“Why would an Australian pimp want to murder a Chinese oilman?”
“He was likely a cutout for the person or persons who wanted Fan Min dead. He was probably paid a great deal of money to pass the poisoned condoms along, no questions asked.”
The president’s secretary added, “And now the cutout has been cut out.”
“Exactly my thoughts, sir.”
The questions stopped.
So far, so good, Chen thought. His team in Luanda had done spectacular work in such a short period of time. He hoped it would be enough.
The most important heads in the room conferred in sharp whispers. Chen was known for his brutal honesty, another rare trait for a man in his position. That honesty was a temporary shield, at best.
The chairwoman of the Silk Road Fund spoke next.
“I’m not sure you fully appreciate the significance of this attack.”
“I’m sure I do not, Madame Chairwoman. Please enlighten me.”
What else could he say?
The chairwoman launched into a long lecture regarding the nature and scope of the Belt and Road Initiative and its vital significance for China’s future economic and military development.
Then came a brief review of Angola’s strategic role in the BRI from the deputy foreign minister.
The CEO of CNOOC detailed at length the repercussions of the resulting workers’ strike in Lobito and the catastrophic effect of halted construction for the refinery and potentially every other Angolan project.
A warning of President Zhao’s personal interest in this heinous attack was given by his secretary, along with the urgent need to punish the perpetrators of the national humiliation that reflected poorly on the president and, ultimately, the Party.
And finally, the nature of Chen’s penalty for failing to resolve the issue was made crystal clear.
“Thank you” was all he said.
It was all he could say.
The chairwoman delivered his single instruction: “Pull every string, turn over every rock, tear apart every nest. Do whatever you must do to find the criminal bandits who murdered our people and wipe them off the face of the earth immediately.”
He bowed slightly, in the old manner.
“It shall be done.”
48
What do these bastards expect?
Chen fumed silently as he turned on his heel and headed for the conference room door. The refinery attack had happened less than four hours earlier. There wasn’t a security service on the planet that could have provided the answers his team did in that period of time.
Fortunately, the MSS had human and technical assets on the ground all over Africa.
Chen began running his extensive list of Angola assets through his mind as he crossed the threshold. By the time he stepped into the elevator, he had already exhausted it.
There was no question in his mind that Fan Min’s death and the refinery attack were connected; after all, it was Fan Min’s company that was building the refinery. More important, the two events combined sent a very powerful political message. To be certain, however, he had tasked his best operator to explore Fan Min’s private life to determine if the assassination was the result of a personal vendetta, which Chen deemed highly unlikely.
The chief problem Chen faced was that the NFLA was a new group, and until yesterday had committed no acts of lethal violence. There had been neither time nor opportunity to infiltrate the organization, let alone identify members, funding sources, and weapons suppliers.
The more immediate difficulty preventing him from identifying the killers was that all of his potential leads—the prostitute, the pimp, the truck driver, and, of course, Fan Min and the PLA security guards—were all dead.
Whoever staged the attack on the refinery and the assassination of Fan Min had been exceedingly thorough in their planning and execution. Every possible lead had been cut down or burned away. The NFLA must be very well organized and disciplined.
“Bullshit,” he said as the elevator doors slid open. It wasn’t possible. Most indigenous revolutionary movements were hardly more than criminal gangs coalesced around a political or religious ideology. First attempts at kinetic assaults by such groups were always problematic and faltering, at best. But the NFLA’s operational efficiencies suggested advanced tactical training and intelligence gathering, capacities far beyond an indigenous rebel gang.
Chen’s bodyguard-driver opened the rear door to the black Hongqi (Red Flag) H7 government limousine parked in the basement lot opposite the VIP elevator.
“My office,” Chen barked as he climbed in, his thoughts barely interrupted.
These sophisticated abilities could have been provided only by an advanced intelligence service—the Americans, the French, the British, the Israelis, the Russians—the usual suspects with the usual motives.
Who else? Perhaps the South Africans. They had invaded Angola during the civil war to protect their interests there. Highly unlikely, though. After the radical regime change in Johannesburg, their intelligence capacities had degraded enormously, especially of late.
The North Koreans? Always a pain in the ass, Chen thought, but hard to believe they’d range this far and deploy scarce r
esources just to annoy their Chinese older brothers with no discernible benefit to themselves.
Perhaps the Cuban DI—Dirección de Inteligencia—was behind this disaster. At one point, thirty-seven thousand Cuban soldiers were fighting in Angola, and ten thousand were killed during the civil war. China had since displaced Cuba as a force in Angola. Were the Cubans laying the groundwork for a resurgence in the region?
As the limo sped along Beijing Financial Street, Chen began to panic. The MSS certainly had sources within the Western intelligence service, and bribes could be offered to other amenable bureaucrats. But that would all take time, and time was the one commodity he was short of.
Chen lit a cigarette. He was missing something. What was it? He searched his mind.
A place? A name?
Yes. Both.
“CHIBI,” he said aloud.
“Sir?”
“Nothing. Drive.”
Chen pressed a button. The security glass rose, separating him from the driver’s compartment.
He cursed himself. How could he have forgotten? CHIBI was one of the strangest experiences of his professional life. His brain must have buried it like a traumatic memory.
As his Red Flag limo pulled up to the Stalinist marble edifice of the Ministry of State Security, Chen made a decision.
He would reach out to CHIBI one more time. It was fortunate the enigmatic source had left instructions for just such an occasion.
Chen would express his concern that the information provided previously was well appreciated but likely a fluke. In order to participate in the London auction, he would need another proof-of-concept demonstration of his own choosing—finding actionable intelligence on the Lobito assault. Five soldiers who led the attack would be easier to locate than an unknown number of invisible assassins who murdered Fan Min. Chen was certain that finding the NFLA attackers would lead to the assassins eventually.
It was a long shot. Perhaps CHIBI was no longer interested in his proposed quid pro quo. Perhaps he couldn’t acquire the intel needed. Perhaps CHIBI was, in fact, a digital honey trap.