“I guess I should take custody of the recordings,” said Chang.
“ ‘Originator controls.’ Come down to 1026 and get the drives, monitors, everything.”
“I’ll be right there. I’ll let the COS figure out the distribution list when I get to the safe house.”
“Better you than me, brother,” said Flanagan.
“I’ll be there in twenty seconds.”
Chang grabbed a fat legal-size briefcase. Before heading to the next room, he made another quick call on the covert communications device to Warren Winkle, the Singapore station chief.
“What’s up, hotshot?” asked Winkle when the Ops Center patched through the call.
“I have to see you right now, sir. We need to put a hold on any distribution of what just went down. No transmission, even restricted handling. Can you meet me now?”
“Chill out, Chang. Let Flanagan handle it. I just got the mijian from Sentosa One. I’m going over it now. Pretty juicy stuff. I need to write a cable tonight. Some of it could go stale in a hurry.”
“Seriously, sir, I need to see you. This guy bled secrets.”
“Flanagan said you banged him. Nice job. Surprisingly adept.”
Winkle was famously grumpy. This was supposed to be his last assignment after a career in East Asia. He had been waiting for something big to happen, and here it was. He said he’d meet the young case officer in thirty minutes at “Safe House Orange,” which was on Grange Road, near the embassy.
Chang made one more call to a number in Washington. John Vandel answered. Chang was suddenly flustered.
“It came up aces,” said Chang. “Pretty . . . amazing.” He couldn’t cover the emotion in his voice.
“How amazing?”
“He spilled his guts. Everything on our list.”
“Are they inside the Starship Enterprise?”
“Yes, sir. No ID on their penetration, but enough to work on. And we got the book. Winkle’s translating some of it now.”
“Good boy,” said Vandel.
“Thank you, sir,” said Chang. The phrase stuck in his ears.
Harris Chang gathered the digital audio monitor and backup recording gear from Flanagan. He put it all in his briefcase, which he locked. Flanagan called the driver of a car down below, waiting on a side street.
Chang tried to unwind in the Toyota sedan as it snaked through the downtown evening traffic. He was hungry. All he had was a granola bar, stuffed in his jacket many hours before. He gobbled it down and took a bottle of water from the driver. He waited for the anxiety to leach out of his body.
The driver followed a brief surveillance detection route, east toward the airport and then north toward the reservoir, but it was halfhearted. The Singapore police had so many cameras in place that there was no such thing as anonymity in this microchip of a country. Singapore was a liaison partner, but its service was laced with “friends” of China.
The Toyota slid through a dozen intersections as it made its way back toward Grange Road. This was the embassy district, skirted to the south with large residences for foreign diplomats and civil servants and to the north with modern high-rises. The car slowed as it approached an oval-shaped tower. The driver took the rear entrance to the garage, punched in a code at the gate, and deposited Harris Chang by the basement elevator.
The “safe house” was an efficiency apartment on the fourth floor of the building. The station got it cheap because the Chinese detested the number four, which sounded like the Chinese word for “death.”
Chang knocked twice. One loud, one soft. Warren Winkle opened the door. He was a short man with a low belly and bushy white hair around his bald spot. Chang entered the room, lugging his legal briefcase. Winkle turned on the radio. He pointed to the couch.
A black notebook was open on the table. Next to it was a tape recorder, into which Winkle was dictating his translation of what the book contained.
“What’s in the mijian?” asked Chang. “Anything good?”
“Pure gold. This guy has been taking notes on all the dirty deals made by his friends at the MSS. There’s enough in there to burn half the Ministry. Vandel’s going to eat it up. Give me the headline on the good Dr. Ma.”
“The MSS is running a penetration inside the agency.”
“Fuck me,” Winkle said again. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, sir. The penetration is helping the MSS collect intelligence about our black supercomputing projects. Quantum computing, specifically. He’s just what Vandel was looking for. He’s the technical adviser of a program they call Xie, the Scorpion. He helps plan its operations.”
“I know what Xie mean, Harris. You may be Chinese, but I fucking speak it. Cut to the chase. Who’s the mole?”
“Ma doesn’t know the penetration’s name or where he works at the agency. He has a crypt, but it’s a number, and our man doesn’t remember it. He says people in the Ministry refer to their asset as Rukou.”
“The Doorway,” said Winkle. “Hell of a code name for a mole. What else does he know about him?”
“He says the penetration is high up, because he has access to so many technical programs. He’s handled by someone very senior at the ministry, but Ma said he doesn’t know who. And Ma says this Rukou has a relative who works at the CIA.”
“Everybody at the CIA has a relative at the CIA. What else?”
“That’s it, pretty much. We’re going to talk again tomorrow. The station is babysitting him at his hotel. Officers in place on both sides of his suite.”
“I know that,” said Winkle. “I put them there, for god’s sake. Is this guy going to flip on us? Back out. Try to make a run for the airport?”
“I don’t think so. He’s terrified of what the MSS would do to him if they found out. I told him we could take care of him. Money, mistress, kid at college, the works.”
“He’s going to panic when he gets back to the room and can’t find his mijian.”
“Maybe. But that’s the way Vandel wanted it. He thinks our man will understand that we own him.”
“He should be scared. He’s a dead man if their Rukou finds out.”
“We need to talk about that, sir. Who do we inform about this?”
“You got it all recorded, right? Where’s the audio?”
Chang tapped his briefcase. “I told Flanagan not to share anything with anyone.”
“Okay. So you’re not a complete moron, even if you did serve in the Army.”
Chang fought the urge to roll his eyes.
“Just joking. Let me get you a drink. It’s Scotch, right?”
Winkle walked to the bar of the well-stocked safe house. He came back with whiskey for his case officer and a big vodka on the rocks for himself. He opened a can of Planter’s mixed nuts. Chang waited for him to speak, but for a long moment the station chief was silent.
“Here’s how it’s going to go down,” Winkle said eventually. “Vandel has created a special compartment for this case. Until you hear otherwise, it will have five people in it. You, me, Vandel, Kate Sturm from Support, and the Director. If you need any tech support, you can add Mark Flanagan. He already heard everything on the audio feed. But otherwise, that’s it. We’re not telling anyone else at the Fudge Factory.”
“What about Amy Molinari? She’s your boss. She’s the China ‘mission manager.’ Can you keep her out?”
“Yup. I just did. I report to Vandel, the deputy director for operations, not a goddamn mission manager. She’s excluded until the DDO says otherwise.”
“Why?” asked Chang. He was inwardly pleased, but he wondered if Winkle could get away with it.
“Because I’m a mean old bastard, that’s why. I’ve worked with Molinari for twenty years and I still don’t know anything about her, except that she’s smart and ambitious, and she doesn’t like flaps. And there’s another thing, my friend.”
“What’s that?”
“Amy Molinari doesn’t like you. She thinks you’re not a team play
er. Meaning that she’s jealous of your boyfriend, Vandel. She thinks the DDO has been reorganized out of existence, and she resents the fact the director approved this operation. She told me to handle it ‘strictly by the book,’ which meant minimal support.”
“And you ignored her.”
“Of course, I did. Molinari doesn’t like ops. She came up as an analyst, and not even a good one. The woman she replaced, ‘Amber,’ now she was an operator. Not Molinari. When she was chief in Beijing, she was the liaison queen, but the station was in lockdown. That’s a fact. She doesn’t like spying on the Chinese. The congressional committees think she hung the moon. But that doesn’t mean I have to like her. Or include her in this compartment. You good with that?”
“Sounds like mutual career suicide, but you’re the station chief. It’s your call.”
“Finish your drink. Then sober up. You have to write an intel report, personal to the DDO. Most important of your career. Maybe mine, too.”
“What’s our ops plan for tomorrow?”
“Tell Dr. Ma that you love him. Give him the coms. Tell him you don’t know what happened to his mijian, wink-wink. Say you’ll handle him personally. You’ll meet him outside the country. Rukou won’t know anything. Tell him that even Beijing station won’t know. That’s how tight it will be.”
“Is that true? That Beijing won’t know?”
“Sure. We make whatever rules we want on this one.”
“What about money? I need to tell the guy something. He’s greedy.”
“Start the money flowing, right away. Like, tomorrow. Pay him the max, one hundred thousand dollars a month, into a new bank account. Show him the receipts and then burn them. Dramatic. He’ll like that.”
“And Molinari? She knows I was meeting the target today. She’ll want to know what happened.”
“I’ll tell her the operation was a bust. The guy wouldn’t play and he had a dog whistle to call the Ministry. I’m good at lying. Years of experience.”
“People really are going to hate me,” said Chang.
“Not if they don’t know anything about the case. And we’re not going to tell them. Until we have this all trussed up nice and tight. And then, my friend, we are going to seriously mess with people. Vandel is going to take down the Ministry of State Security before he’s through. Mark my words. And look at you! A semi-competent former military officer who turned out to be better than expected at busting someone’s balls.”
“You’re pissing me off, Warren.”
“Good. Now get to work on the cable. I’m going back to my mijian.”
Winkle toddled off to a study and returned with a laptop computer for Chang. He took a large swig of his vodka and then went back to the secret notebook and his dictation.
Chang plugged in his earphones and began transcribing key details from the interrogation of Dr. Ma.
5.
SENTOSA ISLAND, SINGAPORE
Emily Jones-Rodriguez, the officer designated as “Sentosa One” who was monitoring the suite next door by video, realized just after 2:00 a.m. that something was wrong. Dr. Ma Yubo had risen from bed and ruffled underneath the mattress, looking for his secret notebook. Through the audio feed, she’d heard a sound like a sharp wail, then silence. Earlier that evening, she had asked for guidance in case he discovered the mijian was gone, and she had been told to do nothing. Let him stew. That was direct from the station chief.
And it seemed okay at first. Dr. Ma had returned to bed for five minutes and then gone to the bathroom. But he hadn’t come back.
Jones-Rodriguez was blind. The Office of Technical Services hadn’t had time to rig a video camera in the bathroom that evening, before Ma’s return. What worried Jones-Rodriguez wasn’t just that the surveillance target was taking so long in the john, but that she’d heard a loud noise on the audio feed, a sharp crack and a brief sound like a muffled human voice.
“Did you hear that?” she asked her colleague, the tech who had rigged the bugs. He had flown in with Flanagan from the regional S&T base in Japan.
“Roger that,” said the tech. “Sounded like someone fell off a chair.”
“Shit,” said Jones-Rodriguez. She grabbed for her phone and called the special number for the ops watch officer at the station.
“This is Sentosa One. Request permission to enter subject’s room,” she said. “Urgent.”
“What’s up?” asked a sleepy voice.
“Code Blue,” she said.
“You sure?” responded the ops officer.
“No. That’s why I want to check. He went into the bathroom and I can’t see him. Our video is shit. I heard something I didn’t like. I want to check it out.”
“Go,” said the station representative. He paused while he looked for written guidance, then came back. “ROE says no firearms.”
Jones-Rodriguez took her gun anyway. She slipped out her door and inserted the master key card into the lock for Dr. Ma’s suite. The lights were dimmed. Mozart was playing softly on the sound system.
She entered the bathroom, gun raised, and then lowered it.
Dr. Ma’s body was hanging from a noose he had crafted from a power cord.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she muttered, staring at the body. She cut him down and felt his pulse, but it was gone.
Jones-Rodriguez called the ops hotline again.
“We have a major flap situation here. We have a dead body, I think. He tried to hang himself. Succeeded, it looks like. We need to extract him or something.”
The watch officer made a quick call and then came back on the line.
“Get the tech in from next door. It says in the ops profile that he has medic training. Let him work on the body. Otherwise do not touch a goddamn thing. Got it?”
“Copy,” said Jones-Rodriguez. Thirty seconds later, the tech was pounding Dr. Ma’s chest and breathing into his mouth. He kept at it for nearly five minutes, until the phone buzzed with a call from the ops center at Headquarters.
“Target is gone,” said Jones-Rodriguez into the phone. “Like dead. We’ve been working him since the last call. Nada. What do you want us to do with him?”
“Nothing. Listen to me very carefully. Clean up the room so there’s not a trace of anyone but the target. Nobody else has been in the room. Wipe it down good, and then wipe it again. Copy?”
“Yes, sir. What else?”
“Clear out of both the adjoining villas. Everything. No trace. Wipe it all down, and wipe the wipes. If you all were too dumb to wear latex gloves, put them on now. Copy?”
“Roger that. We have the gloves on. Or at least I do. What about the body?”
“Leave it just like you found it. Noose, chair, whatever else he used. The guy killed himself. That’s the way it should read. Just like it happened.”
“Roger that. There are abrasion marks on his skin and lacerations on his face, and probably his neck is broken.”
“Good. Just put him back the way you found him and then get the fuck out. Station is sending officers in Singapore police uniforms to get your team out the back way, by Palawan Beach Road. Copy all that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is there any note?”
Jones-Rodriguez took a quick tour of the suite.
“Nothing that I can see. There’s a bunch of torn-up shit in the trash, but it’s not a suicide note.”
“Okay, one last thing. You see anything that says ‘Luxembourg Asset Management’ lying around the room?”
“Wait one, Singapore Ops.”
Jones-Rodriguez went back to the trash basket and double checked.
“Sentosa One back. That Luxembourg thing was what was ripped up in the trash. There are six or eight pages, with a bunch of numbers. He tore them up, but not very well. What should I do with the scraps?”
“Nothing. Leave it just like you found it, torn up, in the trash. Don’t touch a thing. And for god’s sake don’t leave any DNA.”
“I think I have that part, Singapore Ops. Anything els
e?”
“No. Out now. No tracks. Bring everyone and everything with you. No more fuck-ups, please.”
“Roger that, Sentosa out,” said Jones-Rodriguez. In that instant, considering the possibility that her CIA career was effectively over, she wondered if it was too late to go to law school.
“He’s dead. The fucker,” muttered Warren Winkle when he put down the phone after getting the urgent, disastrous call from the ops chief at Singapore station. He and Chang were still sitting at their computers in Safe House Orange, typing out their cables. Winkle cursed again, loudly, and then pointed his finger at Chang.
“Did you do this?” Winkle demanded.
“Do what? What happened?” Chang was just taking off his earphones. He looked at Winkle quizzically.
“The SOB just killed himself. That’s what. The late Dr. Ma. He made a noose out of a power cord. The watchers, evidently, were not watching. What the hell did you tell him at the end of your meeting? I thought this guy was solid. How the fuck could this have happened? I mean, seriously: Tell me, goddammit.”
Chang was numbly shaking his head. He was dazed. His new agent was dead six hours after he’d been recruited? He had no idea how that had happened. Was he that stupid, that he had missed the signs?
“I don’t know, Warren. When he left the Holiday Inn, he seemed okay. Resigned. Not happy, but not on a suicide watch. Maybe he flipped when he saw that his mijian was missing. All his secrets gone. Who knows?”
“Did he say anything? Like: I’m going to kill myself when you bastards take me back to the hotel. Something like that?”
“Fuck off,” said Chang angrily. The last thing he needed was the station chief’s obnoxious needling.
“Sorry,” said Winkle. “I know you’re upset. This is your guy. Or was. Talk to me.”
Chang searched his memory, trying to find stitches of fact that would explain this catastrophic outcome.
The Quantum Spy Page 5