“What are you doing here, man? I thought you had turned Japanese.”
“Time to come home,” answered Flanagan. “I saw that you had defected to IARPA, and I thought that might be a fun place for me. Headquarters is in another state!”
“Don’t do it, buddy,” said Kronholz. “I thought the same thing: Get some IC experience. Work with real scientists. Pad my resume for when I leave the agency. It sounded like a great idea. But it isn’t.”
“What’s wrong with it? It sounds like the perfect escape.”
“It’s boring. Most of the shit IARPA puts money into turns out to be a dead end, and the few things that work out we have to bury, which pisses everyone off. As program managers, we’re not scientists or even techs. We’re paper-pushers. I’d go back to Headquarters tomorrow, if they’d let me. I may just quit and work for a contractor.”
“Sad to think of a place more messed-up than Headquarters,” said Flanagan.
“Yup.” Neither man spoke for a moment. Kronholz broke the silence.
“Check this out, Mark.” He took his friend to the window and pointed to his fancy, powder-blue Jaguar convertible in the parking lot, his new toy.
“Nice. Must have cost a lot.”
“It cost a ton, but who’s counting?” It was a flip remark, something anyone might say, but it hung in the air.
As Flanagan listened to his former colleague, frustrated with his job and seemingly flush with money, it seemed plausible that he might be the person they were looking for. Bored people sometimes do strange things to restore their self-esteem; they seek out others who will value them in the way they feel they deserve; they seek, too, the special, illicit arrangements that can buy a fancy sports car.
As Flanagan rose to leave, he fixed the microphone gently to the underside of Kronholz’s desk. He shook the younger man’s hand firmly and wished him good luck in getting back to S&T before the tedium of his current job led him to do something rash.
When he had left the building, Flanagan crept along the perimeter of the parking lot until he found Kronholz’s new Jaguar, to which he attached a GPS tracking device. After that, he stopped off at Kronholz’s house in Arlington, jimmied the back door, and put surveillance devices in four rooms of his house.
Vandel ate lunch in his office. He was puzzling about what intelligence he should use as chicken feed with Kronholz. It should be something about quantum computing that the Chinese would want to know immediately. It had to be real, but it couldn’t be truly valuable. He needed technical advice on what might work. He remembered that Kate Sturm had already recruited someone as an informal adviser: Denise Ford, the former ops officer.
Vandel called Sturm’s office to get Ford’s number and make sure it was a good idea. But Sturm’s assistant said that her boss had left the office to go home and get some rest before returning for her 6:00 p.m. meeting. The assistant offered to try her cell phone, but Vandel said not to bother her, it was something he could handle himself. He didn’t want to wake up Kate twice in one day.
Melanie, his assistant, got Denise Ford’s extension and put through the call.
“Hello, Denise, this is John Vandel,” he said when she came on the line. “Kate Sturm said you could help us out with some technical problems.”
“Yes, sir,” Ford said quickly. She was sleepy herself, after the long flight, and startled to be contacted personally by the deputy director for operations. “Kate said there was some sort of special compartment where you needed expertise about quantum computing.”
“Exactly. Things have moved more quickly than we expected. Do you have any time now?”
Ford paused before she answered. She shook the sleep out of her head. When she spoke, her voice was crisp and assured. She agreed to meet Vandel thirty minutes later, in the cafeteria between the new and old Headquarters buildings.
When Ford approached, Vandel nodded appreciatively. She was dressed in a tweed suit, better cut and more stylish than what most CIA employees wore to work. He hadn’t seen her in years, but it was obvious that she had taken good care of herself.
Vandel straightened his back and adjusted his tie.
“Hey, Denise. It’s been too long. Thanks for helping us out.”
“Flattered to be asked.” She smiled broadly. It was good to be in the club again.
Vandel moved a little closer. His voice lost its edge. His gray eyes softened.
“I need something,” he said. “I want a piece of intel that’s hot, but not too hot, that I can feed to an adversary. Like what you did a few years ago with the Russians. Remember that?”
“Oh, yes. Very proud of that one. I thought people had forgotten about that. Where’s this new package going?”
“Can’t tell you, my dear, but you can probably guess. It’s not Moscow. Do we have any new quantum reporting that’s just gone into the black box, which it wouldn’t kill us to lose?”
Ford thought a moment and then described two recently classified projects. An NSA team working with a university in Connecticut had just developed a new technology for making “Josephson Junctions,” which were one tool in the intelligence community’s experiments with superconducting. Another team, working with a big defense contractor, had just written a new programming language for pattern recognition and factoring on a quantum computer. Neither would have practical application for more than a decade.
Vandel listened carefully, nodding when he understood and asking for more explanation when he didn’t. When she finished, he made his choice.
“The programming language sounds perfect,” he said. “Important, but obscure. The right thing to use as bait.”
“Yes, sir,” said Ford. “I’ll get you the details of the programming contract this afternoon. It’s a joint project, with money from In-Q-Tel and IARPA. I can bring it by your office, if you want.”
“You’re a superstar,” said Vandel, taking her hand in both of his.
“Send it to Kate. I’ll figure out with my team how we’ll use it. Maybe we can get you cleared into the compartment, too. That will make it easier, next time.”
“Not a problem,” she said. “I’m happy to help in any way I can.”
18.
BEIJING, CHINA
The sky was heavy as cast lead over the capital. The pollution had rolled in on a gentle east wind and then congealed over the capital, suspending Beijing in a cloud of particulate matter that was the residue of iron and steel and concrete and chemical wastes, and a hundred other things that had made the New China and were now killing it. It was a day when people stayed indoors and coughed out as much of the soot in their lungs as they could before braving the trip back home. Some of the secretaries down the corridor from Li Zian’s office were wearing gauze face masks to ward off the bad air that was circulating through the ducts of the heating system.
Li Zian’s office looked out on a garden, but today the green was diluted by the acrid brown mist. The walls of the office were spare, like the man. He had no pictures of himself shaking hands with Party leaders, no award trinkets from the banquets thrown in his honor. On his desk was a picture of his wife; behind his desk, atop a credenza, was a picture of the badminton club at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he had taken his undergraduate degree. He kept it there to remind himself of what America was like between its coasts—friendly, trusting, wanting to be helpful.
Li had been dreading this day. But now that it had arrived, he was eager, almost enthusiastic, for events to happen. He gathered a carefully prepared file from his desk, put it in his briefcase, and rose to leave the inner office. With his round glasses and studious manner, he might almost have been one of the young Bolsheviks who went to study before the revolution in places like Paris or Berlin. It was said of him that he didn’t eat food, only books.
Today, Li Zian would meet with the leading group that oversaw the special project known as Xie, or Scorpion, which monitored quantum computing. Li had hoped to gather the other members at his office at the Xiyuan comp
ound near the Summer Palace. But the Second Department of the PLA had insisted on somewhere else, closer to the center of town. After the fall of another vice minister and the death of the scientist, the generals sensed weakness.
Li proposed that they gather at the Ministry’s formal headquarters downtown, near Tiananmen Square. That was accepted.
Li had decided to bring along Wang Ji, the MSS’s chief of North American operations. He trusted “Carlos,” in his romantic, revolutionary disdain for the PLA and its power plays. The PLA had many things, but it did not have a human sting ray who could speak English with a Cuban accent.
Carlos Wang was waiting downstairs. He was wearing a black leather jacket, a beret, and zip-up leather boots. He had a wispy moustache and a thin goatee. Except for the Chinese features, he might have been Che Guevara himself. Like the American James Angleton or the East German Markus Wolf, he was a man whose eccentric presence and operational success had created something of a legend.
Carlos moved to sit up front with the driver, but Li summoned him to the back seat and pressed a button for the partition screen, so the driver couldn’t hear what they said. They needed to talk before confronting the PLA and its evisceration mission. Li placed his briefcase on the seat between them and gave it a pat.
The big Mercedes limousine rolled off, curtains drawn against any curious proletarians. The Xiyuan campus was out beyond the Fourth Ring Road; with the normal, miserable traffic, the trip to Tiananmen would take nearly an hour. Carlos Wang removed his beret; his hair was long and dyed jet black. The fringes fell to the collar of his leather jacket. He lit up a cigarette without being invited. He was a man who pushed the limits; Li Zian appreciated such bravado, especially this day. He needed to talk, to order his thoughts.
“Have you read into the case?” asked Li. He had opened the window on his side of the car to clear the smoke.
“Of course,” said Wang. “The Singapore files, and the Vancouver files, and now the Palo Alto files. I think we have enough information to understand what happened before the death of Ma Yubo, and after.”
“A disappointment,” said Li. “I should never have brought him into sensitive operations.”
“He was a weak man, minister. But a strong tree can survive even when some of the branches are weak.”
The limousine crawled along the Fourth Ring Road and eventually turned south at the University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Li could see the tower of a big luxury hotel, just ahead, north of the Ring Road. He shuddered. That was where the deposed vice minister had invited Central Committee members for drinks and sex. The vice minister had tried to invite Li there, too, to bring him into the “club.” Li would never admit it, but he was glad that these MSS thieves were being purged, so long as the Ministry itself survived.
The traffic slowed heading into town on Xitugeng Road. As a minister, Li could have put on the lights and siren and gone around the other cars. But he wanted time to plan. And he didn’t mind keeping the PLA waiting, ever.
“What judgments have you reached, now that you have read into the files? I want your thoughts on the principal case officer, this Peter Tong.”
“A puzzling case, minister. Peter Tong is an American of Chinese descent who had not been known to us before. Regrettably, he did a very good job with Dr. Ma. The operational plan appears to have set him up very cleverly with the invitation to discuss investments. But I wonder: Why did they go to such lengths?”
“To weaken me,” answered Li. “I think they mean to bring our house down. Did Ma betray the service? That is the question that others will ask us today.”
“We cannot know what Dr. Ma told this Tong, but given the suicide, we must assume the worst. Whatever he knew is gone.”
“Were we aware of this Luxembourg Asset Management?”
“I regret that we were not, minister. But honestly, if we chased every MSS officer with an offshore bank account, we might as well shut down the service.”
“And there is the missing mijian, with all of Dr. Ma’s personal secrets.”
“Perhaps it is in Chinese hands, minister. A friend at the prosecutor’s office, who works with the Discipline Commission, says they used the mijian to arrest the vice minister.”
“I don’t believe it. The Americans have the mijian. Our enemies in the Party don’t need help, anyway. They have a hundred knives. We have been a target long enough. I want to fight back. I want a counter-strike at the Americans.”
“I can help, minister. This Tong has been dropping his handkerchief everywhere he goes. It’s a provocation, or stupidity, or probably both at the same time. That is the American style.”
“Who do you think he is?” Li pressed his operations chief.
“We know who he is. We finished our review this morning. His real name is Harris Chang. He’s never had a diplomatic posting, so he was clean. Before joining the agency, he was a lieutenant in the Army. A Ranger. That makes him in America, you will forgive me, a ‘big dick.’ ”
Wang Ji snorted as he said these last words. It was part of his style to talk dirty, in the way of the West.
“Where’s he from in America?” pressed Li. “What kind of Chinese family?”
“Harris Chang has an unusual background, minister. He is from the ‘Wild West.’ Flagstaff, Arizona. It’s near the biggest Indian reservation in America and the Grand Canyon, too. He grew up riding horses and playing football.”
“What was a Chinese man doing in Flagstaff, Arizona?”
“His great-grandfather came to build the railroads. We have been doing some research.”
Li Zian sat back in his seat, tall and erect, a Mandarin of the twenty-first century.
“I think I despise this man, Harris Chang. Wild West. Football. The Middle West is the real America. The rest is extreme.”
Carlos Wang nodded. “Truly, he is a barbarian, minister.” In fact, Wang was indifferent. He regarded Chinese chauvinism as a useful operational tool, but not something that a serious person would believe.
“You said you were puzzled, Carlos,” continued the minister. “Why is that?”
“Here is my confusion: Why is Harris Chang so careless? Why does he keep leaving cards with his Peter Tong alias everywhere he goes? His flight records to Singapore were not encrypted. He went to Vancouver to meet Ma’s little whore. And then he announced himself to the Chinese friends of Ma’s daughter, Daiyu, at Stanford. Our consulate says he nearly caused a campus riot. Why is Harris Chang doing these things, Mr. Minister?”
Li Zian answered the question that Carlos had posed so precisely.
“His service wants us to see him. It can only be that. He means to draw us out. To invite us to a meeting. To discover what he knows.”
“I am sure you are right, minister.”
The Minister of State Security stroked his chin. Out the window, past the opaque screen, they were passing the Beijing Film Academy, and then they were inside the Third Ring. They had only a little time left to plan before they reached the old city.
“An encounter with Harris Chang sounds dangerous, Carlos. Why would I ever approve such an operation?”
“Because it may be the best way to protect your asset.”
“You mean Rukou. How would this protect Rukou?”
“Think of how a magician distracts his audience, minister. The right hand moves back and forth, tosses a ball, flashes a bit of powder, makes a flourish, and you don’t notice that the left hand has slipped into the pocket and deposited the marked card.”
“If I were to approve such an operation, would you visit with Mr. Chang? Draw him out, even as he draws us out?”
“Yes, sir. I could do that in Mexico City, where our Cuban friends can help us control the environment.”
“And what would the left hand be doing while this distraction was going on?”
“Ah, dear minister, at the appropriate time you would meet with the agent who is everything to us. The agent that 2PLA, for all its conniving, cannot replace. The
agent who makes us the stinger of Xie. I speak of our asset, your asset, the irreplaceable Rukou.”
Li nodded. He gave his briefcase a protective, reassuring pat.
The limousine had passed inside the Second Ring Road now. The car turned east, toward Beihai Park, and then south to the grand boulevard called “Chang’an,” the street of Perpetual Peace. As they neared Tiananmen, backed by the brutal splendor of the Great Hall of the People, the limousine slowed and turned into the drive of an old gray concrete building, a relic of Soviet days, dark, forbidding, unmodern. The car stopped at the entrance and the two walked up the steps, Wang Ji a step behind his boss.
A great wooden door opened, and the two entered a large entrance hall, dank and drafty. They were ten minutes late, an eternity for a punctual Chinese. “Greetings, minister,” called out the guards and receptionists; late or not, this was an MSS building. Li was the boss, until the PLA contrived to shove him aside.
The lions were waiting inside the main conference room, arrayed around a U-shaped table. At the bottom of the “U” sat the two senior officials who presided over the “leading group” that ran the operation: Dr. Xu Wanquan, a member of the State Council, and General Fang Qilang, representing the liaison bureau of the general political department of the Central Military Commission.
The figures gathered around the table nodded awkwardly and looked at their watches as the MSS men, Li and Wang, made their way to the two empty chairs to the right of State Councilor Xu.
General Wu Huning, the chief of the Second Department of the PLA, sat nestled among the array of uniforms. He was smoking a cigarette. Most of the others rose when Minister Li arrived; he remained seated, puffing on his Marlboro Light.
General Wu dominated the military side of the table; but in the Chinese way, he allowed others to appear to share the lead. Next to him sat the head of 3PLA, which handled communications and cyber-intelligence, and at the end, the commander of what was known as 2PLA First Bureau, which handled the military’s assignment of officers abroad under non-official cover.
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