Chang surveyed his little oasis. The grassy spots were green but the leaves had vanished from most of the trees; there was a wet November chill in the air. Chang drank his coffee. What a sad little place. He missed Flagstaff. The desert sun would be low in the morning at this time of year, the air so crisp that it cleaned your lungs and nostrils with each breath. The Hopi and Navajo traders would be dismantling their roadside stands for the winter; the town would pull a little blanket over itself and sleep, like a hibernating bear, until it got warmer.
Chang rose from his bench and walked the two blocks to the dull façade on North Glebe Road where the agency had its “covert” facility. It took him longer than usual to clear the guard station, but he was eventually sent upstairs and escorted to a conference room, this time with two armed guards from the Office of Security outside the door.
Kate Sturm arrived on time, but Vandel was late, and she didn’t want to start without him. Since the entire floor was designated a Secure Compartmented Information Facility, they had both surrendered their cell phones and had no easy distraction to pass the time. Chang had brought along a paperback of The Duke’s Children, the last of the Palliser novels, so he read about the travails of Lady Glencora and Plantagenet, while Sturm wrote memos to herself in a small wire-bound notebook.
John Vandel arrived eventually with the commotion that is customary when people are late. He complained that he had been up nearly all night framing his operational plans, and the doughy color of his face and the raccoon eyes confirmed that he hadn’t had much sleep. His hair was a messy quill of needles. But he was oddly jubilant, for all the physical exhaustion.
“We’ve got them,” he said, pointing his finger at Chang. “So long as you do your job, we are going to clean their clocks, from here to Beijing.”
“That’s very nice,” said Chang calmly. “But I’m not doing anything until you sign an authorization for my mission, at your direction, and give a copy to Ms. Sturm.”
“What a little robot you are,” Vandel said curtly. “The military mindset.” But he had come prepared. He removed two sheets from his briefcase. “Your orders. Read them over carefully. Then I’ll sign.”
Chang read the short document twice. It said that the deputy director for operations requested Harris Chang, a case officer suspended from the Clandestine Service and under investigation by the counter-intelligence division of the FBI, to conduct a mission targeting officers of the Chinese Ministry of State Security. Upon successful completion of the mission, the deputy director for operations would recommend to the FBI that the investigation of Chang be terminated, without prejudice to Chang’s record, and that he resume active duty with the Directorate of Operations.
Chang let the document fall to the table below.
“This is crap. Sir. It doesn’t really commit you to do anything. I mean, you direct this and you recommend that. But there’s no commitment by anybody.”
“Hey, Harris. It is what it is. You want to call it crap, fine, but it’s all you’ve got. You want me to sign it or not?”
Chang looked his boss in the eye. He felt a rising confidence, for the first time in a long while. While the silence built, he took off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeve until the tattoo showed.
“No jury will ever convict me of espionage,” said Chang. “I’m going to win, no matter what.”
“Maybe so.” Vandel shrugged.
“Sign it,” said Chang. “Have Ms. Sturm sign both copies, to confirm that she’s a witness.”
Vandel was about to protest that they hadn’t agreed to any co-signing, but Sturm waved him off. She had her pen ready; she signed one copy, then the other, a neat careful hand. As she signed, Chang rolled his sleeve back down.
Chang asked for his copy but was told no, the document was classified and he wasn’t authorized to have it. He snorted at the absurdity of that and then asked for permission to copy it out in longhand.
Vandel didn’t answer, but Sturm nodded assent. Chang wrote the brief text on the inside flyleaf of The Duke’s Children.
“Okay, book group’s over. Now that we’ve finished trying to cover our asses, can we get down to a little intelligence work, please? And don’t get me wrong, Harris. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t believe in you. Truly. Are we clear on that?”
Chang stared straight ahead. He felt a wave of disgust hearing Vandel’s affirmation of sincerity.
“Good,” said Vandel. He removed two more sheets of paper from his briefcase and handed one each to Sturm and Chang.
“This is your ops timeline. When you contact Denise Ford, I want you to follow exactly the same tradecraft that she used with you yesterday. ‘Beijing Rules,’ so to speak.”
Vandel handed the timetable to Chang. It had a map at the bottom of the page.
“Here’s the drill. Go to her town house in Old Town. It’s on Prince Street, between Fairfax and Lee, just south of the river. The address is on the sheet. Do a surveillance detection run and shake anything the Chinese may have set up. Drop the message just after 7:00 p.m., when she should be home. Put it through her mail slot, the same way she did with you.”
Vandel read the text aloud:
“Urgent. It’s your friend from the bar. Meet me 8:00 tonight in the Safeway on Royal Street. I’ll be in the canned soup aisle. I have information that you need to know.”
Chang took the message and nodded.
“I’ll run the whole play back at her, in reverse. Note, brush pass, meeting.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay,” said Chang. “What next?”
“For the hour after dropping the note, get lost. Go bowling. I don’t care. The Safeway is three blocks from her town house. Get there a little before 8:00 and then start looking at soup labels. When she shows, brush her this little piece of paper.”
Vandel handed Chang another sheet, this one no larger than a supermarket checkout receipt. Chang read the words:
“Hotel Luna restaurant. King Street. 15 minutes.”
“We’ll have the Luna staked out. Nobody’s getting in except you and her and the extras we’ll have on scene. Take a booth in the corner, facing the window. It will be wired. If she wants another table, don’t fight it. We can get sound and pictures from anywhere in the restaurant.”
“Suppose she smells a rat and wants to go somewhere else?”
“No problem. She can go all the way to West Virginia but we’re going to monitor this meeting. And don’t forget, little buddy, you’ll be wired, too.”
Vandel handed him a tiny button microphone, embedded in adhesive.
“Put that under your shirt. Next to your heart. Or near your bad-ass Army tattoo.”
“What do I tell her when we’re at the Luna?”
“Scare her. Confide in her. You’re her friend. Tell her we have her nailed. Tell her Vandel is ready to have her arrested. If she wants out, now is her last chance.”
“Why am I warning her? Is she supposed to think I’m accepting her pitch?”
“Yes. You’re ready to come over. You’re sick of the CIA. You put your trust in John Vandel and it was betrayed. You’re worried that this is the last chance for both of you. You’re a pro, Harris. You know how to recruit people. This time, do it in reverse.”
“What if she wants more information? Bona fides.”
“Tell her the story. Describe the meeting with Carlos Wang in Mexico. Describe the family pictures. Make it bleed. Tell her what a bastard I am. Tell her you’re sick of racist crap about China. Somehow, I think you can do this. Just make it real.”
Chang shook his head.
“If you had trusted me when I came back from Mexico, I wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“Self-pity is your worst enemy, Harris. It makes you weak. And you’re wrong, by the way. You’re in exactly the position I hoped you would be, before I sent you to Vancouver and Mexico. This isn’t an accident. It’s an operation. Wait for the punch line.”
“You really are a bastard.”<
br />
“No. I am an intelligence officer. It’s a fine line, but there’s a difference.”
Chang looked at his boss with a strange mix of anger and admiration. Maybe this was the thing that people like Vandel and Ford and Li Zian understood. You couldn’t be in their world and not get caught in the undertow.
Chang nodded his head slowly.
“How do I close the deal? Suppose she balks. How do I convince her?”
“This is where it gets sweet: The deal closer is you!”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You tell her that you’re ready to come over. But you need personal assurance from the big boss, Li Zian. Otherwise no deal. You need to meet him soon, somewhere overseas. If not, there’s no deal. You’re taking all the risk. It’s too dangerous. You might go to the FBI.”
Chang closed his eyes and spoke the words of the script.
“I want to defect. I hate John Vandel, and I hate the agency. But I want to meet my new case officer, Li Zian. Otherwise, I can’t do it.”
“Just right,” said Vandel.
Chang opened his eyes again. There was a faint glimmer of a smile.
“Okay. I’m there. How do Ford and I communicate, if Li Zian agrees to meet us? We’re two suspected Chinese spies. We can’t just meet in the cafeteria.”
“Work out the tradecraft with Kate. She’s better at it than I am.”
Vandel looked at his watch. It was his habit that when he wanted to end a meeting, he pretended he had run out of time.
“Let’s get out of here before any of us has second thoughts. You’ll get a medal for this, Harris, assuming it works. Otherwise you’ll get ten years, with time off for good behavior. Just joking. Good luck.”
Vandel strode off, face set, feet splayed, hands thrust in his pockets. He looked like a baseball manager, walking off the mound after deciding to leave his starting pitcher in the game despite a few bad innings.
Kate Sturm walked Chang through the operations plan one more time. When they had covered all the details and were walking toward the door, she turned to him and, after an awkward silence, she apologized to him. Chang asked her what she meant but she wouldn’t answer. She just said that she was sorry.
34.
OLD TOWN, ALEXANDRIA
Harris Chang began his surveillance detection run with a stop at a bar in his neighborhood. There was an empty seat next to a cute redhead in her mid-twenties who was drinking a margarita. She had a girlfriend on the other side, but the friend was talking to the guy next to her, so Harris introduced himself and asked the woman what she did. It sounded like a pickup line, even to him, but she didn’t seem to mind. She said she was a graduate student at Georgetown who wanted to go into the “foreign service.”
“Don’t do it,” said Chang, without thinking. When she asked why not, he mumbled something about low pay.
She asked him what he did and he said he had recently gotten out of the Army and was looking for work. She scrolled through more questions that he didn’t want to answer. She spoke a little Chinese, she said. Chang changed the subject. He talked about the local hockey team and its playoff chances, but she didn’t follow any sports except golf.
Nobody who looked like a watcher had come in or out of the bar; Chang found the redhead annoying, so he paid the tab and left. The woman looked mystified. What had she done wrong? Chang wanted to apologize for making her a decoy; he wanted to apologize for everything. But another guy quickly took his chair at the bar.
Chang took the subway west toward Vienna, then east toward Old Town. He got off two stops after his destination and took a cab back to Ford’s town house on Prince Street. It was a well-kept neighborhood of brick town houses and cobbled streets, a less crowded version of Georgetown, with fewer people on the streets and less dog shit, too. Ford’s two-story brick house was nestled among larger dwellings. The curtains were drawn. From inside, there was the sound of classical music.
Chang read the note a last time and wondered at Ford’s reaction. Did she imagine that she was the hunter or the prey? Chang folded the note and slipped it into the slot. He heard it clank shut as he walked away, quickly, south toward Fairfax Street. He heard the door open behind him but didn’t turn back.
Chang kept walking. She wasn’t coming after him, and there was nobody on the street. He slowed his pace as he neared the thoroughfare of Washington Street. There was a curious statue in the middle of the intersection. Chang waited for the light to turn and walked toward the bronze figure. It portrayed a Confederate soldier, hat in hand, head down, shoulders slouched as he looked south. It was called “Appomattox.” An inscription under the figure said: “They died in the consciousness of duty faithfully performed.” It was a monument to defeat. Chang had never admired the Confederacy, but in that moment, he empathized. Defeated cultures behave strangely.
Chang paced the streets for the next hour, slowly tacking toward the rendezvous at the Safeway. He arrived ten minutes before the meeting. The market occupied a one-story brick building at the less fashionable end of town.
Chang navigated toward the aisle that displayed the canned soups. He began looking at the Campbell’s section and then, after a minute, wandered down a few feet to the array of Progresso cans. He had counted nineteen different kinds of chicken soup when he caught sight of Ford across the aisle, looking at vegetable oils. Without making eye contact, he moved toward her and brushed her purse, depositing his note gently in the open sack.
Ten minutes later Ford was sliding into his booth at the far end of the Luna hotel dining room. She was wearing a tailored black leather jacket over designer jeans. She didn’t look worried; if anything, she looked exultant.
“I knew you were a good man,” she said quietly as she took the seat next to Chang. “You’re sick of the lies and arrogance. You want a new world.”
Her face radiated the fusion of belief and action. Chang pulled back toward the banquette.
“I don’t know what I want, yet. But I need to tell you something. Urgently. The CIA knows you work for the Chinese. They have you cold. They’re ready to arrest you.”
She closed her eyes. She pressed her lips together tightly. When she opened her eyes again, they were ablaze.
“Why are you telling me this? Did they ask you to do this?”
“No,” he lied. “I want to help you. I think you’re right about, I don’t know, everything. I want you to escape.”
“You mean you want to work with me? That’s the only thing we need to discuss.”
Chang paused. Every word he said was being overheard and transcribed. His main feeling was that he needed to finish his mission.
“Maybe. But I need to meet with the Ministry’s top person. The one who handles you. I didn’t like the case officer they sent after me in Mexico. All he wanted to talk about was my Chinese-ness, my duty as a Chinese person. I didn’t like that.”
“I hate racism. In any form. I sympathize. That was wrong.”
Her chin was arched upward. The soft leather sleeve of her jacket grazed against Chang’s arm. Vandel had told him once that the best lies are the ones that you believe. Chang let her arm rest against his, as he formed the words.
“The only thing I ever wanted was to work for America.”
“Me, too,” she said. “I still do. It’s just for the American future, not the past.”
“They think I’m a traitor. I told them they were wrong, I let them polygraph me, over and over, but they still didn’t believe. I listened to all their bullshit racist comments. Something broke. I can’t take it anymore. I have to get out.”
“I understand,” she said. “They betrayed you.”
“I don’t hate my country.”
“Of course not. Our Chinese friends would never assume that. At least not the ones who run the show. They understand how complicated loyalty is.”
“I need to meet the top guy. I can’t make a commitment to someone lower down who can’t keep it.”
“Ma
ybe. Maybe. They travel very quietly. They don’t like to rustle the leaves.”
Their arms still touched. Two hunters; two prey. Chang’s head trembled slightly. Her gaze remained firm.
A waitress arrived. She had the hard body of someone who had graduated from a paramilitary training program. She asked if they’d had a chance to look at the menus.
“Give us a few more minutes,” said Chang.
Ford took Chang’s hand in his. Her soft skin covered his taut fingers.
“How much time do we have?” she asked.
“We need to move quickly. They could arrest you anytime. Tomorrow, the next day. They say they have everything they need. You need to set up the meeting with your friend. I’ll only come if you’re there. I don’t trust anyone else.”
“This isn’t easy,” she said. “They’re very careful.”
“You’re trying to do what’s right. So am I. But they need to show that they’re serious. Otherwise how can I take the risk?”
“I get it,” she said.
“We need to go soon. You’re being watched. So am I. This is dangerous.”
She took one last careful look at Chang, weighing him. She could control herself, but not him. This was a wager she didn’t like to make.
“How will they know this isn’t a trick? That’s what they will ask. And they should. How can they be sure this Chinese-American man isn’t showing a double face?”
Chang thought a moment. What would Li Zian want most? He moved his lips close to her ear. He was improvising, but he could tell from her reaction that he had made a good guess.
“The Ministry of State Security is under attack. Unless it fights back, it will be destroyed. I know how your friend can save himself. I know the secret weaknesses of his adversaries. Tell your friend that. Tell him that we need to meet in the next week, somewhere outside China. Otherwise it will be too late. You and I will be gone, and soon, he will be, too. Tell him I will bring him the information he needs.”
Her eyes were hard as agate marbles. She nodded.
The Quantum Spy Page 28